In 2019 AJ Styles was sent to Raw, and he remained on the red brand up until a few months ago.
The Phenomenal One entered the Intercontinental Championship tournament, and it was later announced that he had been officially traded to Friday Night SmackDown. Styles is having a good run on SmackDown at the moment, but there were a lot of rumors making the rounds regarding his exit from Raw.
Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson recently opened up about getting released from WWE on their Talk N’ Shop podcast, and they went into the situation with AJ Styles.
According to Gallows and Anderson, when they were released in April Styles tried to get to the bottom of why they were released, and they were told it was “Paul Heyman inspired.”
When AJ confronted Paul Heyman he gave AJ his word saying that he had nothing to do with Gallows and Anderson being fired. Karl Anderson noted that Paul Heyman told AJ that if he had known they were getting released, he would have gone to bat for them.
AJ then went to Vince McMahon who said it was Paul Heyman’s call to let them go.
“And AJ went, ‘Okay’, he went back to that [first] guy… he goes, ‘Is this what happened?’ and the person goes, ‘Yes’. So, AJ goes in to Vince and he says, ‘You’ve got to tell me the truth, is Paul the one that said to fire these guys?’ Vince told AJ, he said, ‘Listen, they weren’t on my list, but yes, this was a Heyman thing.'”
Gallows then noted that AJ Styles asked to be moved to SmackDown so that he didn’t have to work with Paul Heyman anymore.
“AJ, he didn’t want to be there alone. When you’re at the very top, you don’t have a lot of friends at the very top especially if you’re not a WWE bred talent, especially if you’re not in developmental with these guys, and going up and down the road for years and then you get to that top level. Those guys have a lot of friends. [AJ] said to f–king bury Paul and tell the truth about it, and [the lies Paul told] are why he couldn’t work with him and he said he needed to be moved [to SmackDown].”
As we previously reported, it’s been confirmed that Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows have signed with Impact Wrestling, and they will be appearing at Slammiversary tonight.
H/T Wrestling Inc.
