AJ Styles retired from professional wrestling last month when he was defeated by Gunther at the Royal Rumble. Leading up to his final match there was a lot of speculation regarding how things would play out, and many fans wondered why AJ Styles didn’t retire at WrestleMania instead.
WWE recently uploaded a new vlog on their YouTube channel which focuses on AJ’s retirement, and in the video The Phenomenal One explained that he was originally going to retire at WrestleMania. However, he instead decided to retire at the Royal Rumble as it was the same pay-per-view where he made his WWE debut.
“You know, everybody wants to retire at WrestleMania, right? The biggest show of the year that we do. And I was gonna do exactly that, but I just came back from an injury that I was supposed to have to, you know, it was supposed to retire me, because 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, 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. Hopefully at the end of this match I stand up on my own two feet, I throw up the P1 that’s on my gloves one more time, I walk.”
While AJ Styles is retired for now, The Phenomenal One recently indicated that he could potentially step into the ring in the future for a special occasion, such as tagging with his son.