AJ Styles Reveals Original Retirement Plan

Although AJ Styles had announced this would be his retirement year, it took a lot of fans by surprise that he would end his WWE career so early in 2026, at the Royal Rumble. If Styles had had his original plan intact, though, he’d have done it sooner, at last year’s WrestleMania. He admits as much in a new vlog just posted by WWE, which covers his last month.

“You know, everybody wants to retire at the WrestleMania, right? The biggest show of the year that we do,” he says.

[John Cena might disagree, though.]

“And I was gonna do exactly that, but I just came back for an injury that I was supposed to have to, you know, I was supposed to retire me ’cause of the injury — it retires most. But once I got healed up and was comfortable enough, you know, running and doing what I needed to do to be AJ Styles, I, it just didn’t feel right to come back for two months just to retire. It didn’t seem right, and I thought what a better way to be able to leave — on the pay-per-view where you debuted.”

He concludes the segment with “Hopefully, at the end of this match, I stand up on, on two feet. I throw up the P1 that’s on my gloves one more time. I walk.”

You can watch the entire thing below: