AJ Styles Says He Gets Why Naraku Is Starting In WWE NXT

Some people were surprised when the former EVIL started his WWE run in NXT instead of the main roster, but AJ Styles says he gets it. EVIL made his WWE debut on the April 29th episode of NXT, and is now going by the ring name of Naraku. Naraku is a veteran of NJPW who was there for over 15 years and had a reign with the company’s top championship.

Styles weighed in on the matter during his Phenomenally Retro podcast. He pointed out that Shinsuke Nakamura also began in NXT and noted that while he himself went straight to the main roster, he had a very difficult learning curve in terms of how WWE does things from a production standpoint. You can see highlights below:

On Talent Like Naraku Starting In NXT:

“Can I just say this? You know, Shinsuke Nakamura was also in NXT. I’m just throwing that out there. Listen, I think there’s certain things that we all need to learn in NXT, right? That will prepare us for the main roster. Even I — I can say this: I had to learn quick. ‘Holy crap, they don’t do this, they do this, boom-boom-boom.’ It was a learning process, and I had to learn quick because I was on there. I couldn’t afford to screw up or mess up, or whatever it is you want to call it. I wanted to stay on the main roster and I had to impress the the guy in charge.”

On Naraku Needing To Learn the WWE Process:

“We don’t want anybody to go up to the main roster and have to learn like that. I don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s better to go [to NXT]. It’s just a smooth transition. Boom. You know where all the cameras are. You know not to turn your back to a camera. Like, a lot of people don’t know that. That was a big thing with me. And Stu, our cameraman, he was like, ‘Hey, AJ, make sure you turn this way instead of putting your back to the hard camera.’ There’s little things that you do that people don’t even think of. You just don’t turn your back to the hard camera. It sounds silly, but I get it, it’s important.

“So we have to make sure that EVIL, as we’re going to call him [on the episode], doesn’t turn his back to the hard camera. That he knows where all of them are and how we film and everything, and produce. Because you don’t do that in Japan. There’s no producers in Japan. Because it doesn’t matter where the cameras are. They just shoot. They don’t know — at least when I was there, they they didn’t know that it was entertainment. It was a sport. So the the camera guys were not involved in the booking meetings, whatever, the meetings in general. So like we we need to know where all this stuff is. It’s important.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Phenomenally Retro with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.