AJ Styles On His Reaction To Ripping His Tights At TLC, Saving James Ellsworth’s Life

AJ Styles recently appeared on the “Sam Roberts Wrestling Podcast” where Sam brought up the fact he noticed James Ellsworth almost took the Styles Clash the wrong way during one of their encounters on Smackdown Live in the midst of their program together.

AJ agreed with that observation as he said, “Well, that’s exactly what happened. And you don’t realize it, and even I didn’t. Because, it’s a very safe move but the only thing I can’t control is your head movement. Now, when you’re upside-down like that it’s kinda weird. It’s a weird position to be in I guess and some guys make the mistake of tucking their heads for some reason, you know, just thrown off by the position they’re in. So I’ve grown very weary to make sure they know where they’re going with this and at the last second I kinda look down just to see where they are. A lot of times I can feel it anyway. And I felt James trying to kill himself, so I just kinda let up on it and made sure that I didn’t go all the way flat and put my hands down to make sure he didn’t come down on his head.”

It definitely shows his ring-awareness and as Sam Roberts put it, this is “the best version of AJ Styles by a mile due to experience and comfortability with opponents.”

AJ said mistakes have been made by himself and by people he’s been in the ring with, so only experience will prepare someone to act quickly like that and it’s important not to panic when things don’t go the way they should.

Sam later questioned AJ about the TLC match he had with Dean Ambrose where he tore a hole in the butt-region of his tights. Styles said he didn’t know he tore his tights initially, he just remembers thinking “man, that really hurt my butt,” when Dean put him through the chairs during that spot.

The Phenomenal One said that it wasn’t until later when Dean went through the table when Ambrose told him “oh, bro you’re gonna need some new gear.” AJ said he knew it was ripped but he didn’t realize how bad it was. He just carried on with the match and said he feels that it speaks to how good the match was that people stopped worrying about his butt-cheek hanging out of that rip in his tights and enjoy the match.

Styles said it wasn’t a “wardrobe malfunction” because that would imply the guy who made his gear messed up. AJ made it very clear that a metal piece of the chair sliced his tights and his skin during that spot, so it had nothing to do with the craftsmanship of his tights. Sam called it more of a “battle wound” and AJ agreed saying, “there was blood on my gear and my butt.”

They went into many other topics during this interview from how much Styles’ life has changed in-between WrestleManias, dealing with obsessed fans, his future match against Shane McMahon, and what Terry Taylor said to him about making sure AJ put on the best match possible and how it won’t always be about him. Spoiler, Taylor said more than just cock-a-doodle-doo… sorry I couldn’t resist, you know.

The podcast can be heard here, and it’s a great listen if you’ve already finished with this week’s Still Real Radio and need something else to tide you over.