AJ Styles is not a happy camper after losing his #1 contender’s spot to Randy Orton on last week’s Smackdown Live. He let his frustrations be known after the show went off the air when he exploded on Shane McMahon backstage in one of the best-produced segments we’ve seen in a long time.
The Phenomenal One was at Madison Square Garden during WWE’s house show in the Big Apple and so was Shane McMahon. Naturally, these two wrestling legends butted heads.
It’s a very interesting dichotomy they’re going with here as Styles appears to be booked as the heel in this feud. Shane put AJ over for his amazing ring talents by saying, “I think you’re one of the best in-ring performers in this business.” But, AJ wasn’t hearing the pandering as he wanted to vent his frustrations.
The two men had an exchange of words which can only be seen as foreshadowing to what is to come in the short time we have left until WrestleMania which will eventually build to a match between the two of them.
Although AJ Styles is being booked as the heel in this rivalry, he still has a good portion of the audience behind him and that’s not going to change. Shane said that sometimes a person has to make their opportunities for themselves, and that looks like what AJ has to do.
Shane capped off this in-ring confrontation by introducing AJ’s opponent for the night, a man who beat him last week on Smackdown Live: Randy Orton. Orton was booked as a babyface arsonist in his feud against Bray Wyatt and at the Madison Square Garden show, and that’s a pretty interesting creative decision too.
But these choices only go to further reflect the complexity of the current WWE fanbase’s mindset. AJ might have lost the match by taking another RKO outta nowhere, but Styles isn’t done with Shane-O-Mac by a longshot.
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