AJ Styles believes the reduction in WWE live events is having a direct and damaging effect on wrestlers’ ability to call matches on the fly, and he says the problem is only going to get worse as time goes on.
Speaking on the Phenomenally Retro Podcast, the newly retired Hall of Famer explained why the old school philosophy of calling everything in the ring has become increasingly difficult to execute in the current environment.
“Here’s what’s hard with that now. I think a lot of the older guys who said, ‘Nah, we’ll call it in the ring, kid,’ well, a lot of times they had the ability to wrestle so many different guys and they were able to call it in the ring because they weren’t sidelined by time limits or whatever. You have to hit your times or they’ve wrestled the guy so many times before. Of course you can call it. I could call a lot of things. The more I wrestle one guy, ‘Hey man, we’ll just do what we did here,’ and boom, and it’s that quick. But we’re not having live events like that anymore so guys aren’t getting any reps with each other,” Styles said.
He also explained the long-term consequences of that gap in experience.
“I think that it’s going to be a lot harder to call. Yeah, sure, we can call the basic stuff, but sometimes basic isn’t very entertaining and that’s our job, is to be as entertaining as we possibly can. So I think that’s going to be more difficult as time goes on,” Styles said.
On the modern style of wrestling itself, Styles offered genuine admiration for what today’s performers bring to the ring while acknowledging how that complexity makes improvisation even harder.
“There’s a lot of different styles that we now bring to the ring. It’s not the same. It’s not just shoulder tackles, grab hold, suplex, power slams, not a finish. There’s a lot of different things, and a lot of different moves that guys and girls do. It’s pretty unbelievable. In fact, when you think about it, diving out of the ring and all these things have to take place, I don’t know that it could be done as well and as flawless as it was back then because it was so basic back then,” Styles said.
He also addressed what rehearsal actually looks like in modern WWE, clarifying that performers are not running through matches but rather working out camera positioning.
“Once you get to the ring, there will be some things where we’ll rehearse. And by rehearse, we’re not rehearsing the wrestling. We’re not doing that. We want to see what cameras are going to be in the position that we’re doing a certain thing so we get the best shot on the finish. That’s kind of what we rehearse, or maybe somebody does a run-in, want to see how everything’s done so that we get the best shot. So those things happen,” Styles said.
Styles retired from in-ring competition after a 26-year career at the Royal Rumble earlier this year and was subsequently inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. He has since taken on backstage duties at the WWE Performance Center.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit the Phenomenally Retro Podcast with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
