If Christian Cage left, A.J. Styles was prepared to follow suit.
Over 10 years of A.J. Styles’ in-ring career was spent with TNA Wrestling. He held multiple championships throughout his years with the promotion but there was a point when Styles was prepared to cut that short.
He appeared on Insight with Chris Van Vliet and detailed a backstage meeting that Dixie Carter hosted. She told talent that if they did not want to be in TNA, they could leave.
Styles waited to see what Christian Cage was going to do and said if Cage had gotten up, he would have left too. He was hopeful that Cage could have gotten him into WWE at the time.
No one ever really said anything to me (about interest from WWE when I was doing my best work in TNA). But I’ll tell you, there was an instance when Christian (Cage) — and Dixie (Carter) came out and kind of made — it was a big meeting, and Dixie came out and said, ‘Listen,’ and basically said something to the fact, like, ‘If you don’t want to be here, we’ll let you go,’ and at that moment, I looked over at Christian to see what he was gonna do. This gotta be 2009? ‘8? ‘10? I don’t know, somewhere around there. But I was watching him because I looked up to Christian. He’s amazing too. This guy, he’s a ring general for sure, and I was watching him to see if he got up because if he had gotten up… I don’t know when she expected us to leave (Styles responded when asked if talents would’ve had to leave at that exact moment). But I kind of felt like she was saying, hey, you can go now, and I was seriously — if he would have got up, I would have got up too, and hopefully, he would have gotten me in the WWE or something.
Styles was backstage at TNA Final Resolution in December 2024. He stated that he would like to make his on-screen return to the promotion as part of the WWE-TNA partnership.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
