– WhatCulture caught up with AJ Styles at the 5* Wrestling event in Newcastle, England this past Wednesday night, as seen in the video above. After mentioning the recent WWE website article on The Bullet Club and Shinsuke Nakamura, Styles was asked if he would be open for bookings on January 24th, which is the night of the WWE Royal Rumble pay-per-view. He replied with a “sure.” Styles talks about WWE and NXT around the 6:30 mark.
Styles was also asked if he were to go to WWE and join NXT, which opponents he might want to work with. He replied, “You ask that question already knowing the answer. That’s funny, you know… Finn Balor is one most people would like to see me wrestle. Prince Devitt if you will, from New Japan Pro Wrestling. And the guy’s very talented. Samoa Joe’s in NXT, I would do that all over again. There’s definitely up and coming guys I’d love to work with but there’s also guys I haven’t worked with in TNA and WWE. There’s a lot of guys I haven’t worked with. Hopefully I’ll get to wrestle them before its over. Great things are happening, crazy things in my life. I have a 1 year old daughter… I’ve got to add another tattoo and I don’t have a place to put it. It’s the crazy life of AJ Styles but it’s a good one.”
When asked what’s next for AJ Styles, he said, “I love what I do. I’m going to do what I do, best I think. I’m definitely not an artist but I can paint with the wrestling brush. I think I got some kind of thing going on with that. And I’m going to keep doing that as long as I can. Keep in mind, still gonna be able to walk away from this business. Will I have surgeries? Of course I will because I’m going to get old and I’ve hurt myself but that’s just the nature of the beast. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
As noted via The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, at one point WWE wanted to bring Styles in as a surprise entrant in the 30-man Royal Rumble main event but those plans may have changed once the news got out that the four from NJPW were coming in.