AJ Styles recently spoke with our friend Ryan Carse of The Tag Rope, a quarterly pro wrestling magazine. The Phenominal One spoke about a wide range of topics, including his time wrestling in Japan, early memories of breaking onto the independent circuit, thoughts on Shinsuke Nakamura and much more. Here are some highlights of what he said about:
The most important thing he learned in Japan:
“Just because people weren’t making a lot of noise doesn’t mean they weren’t paying attention. The Japan crowds are very different from the UK and American crowds; they’re really paying attention, watching and loving professional wrestling for what it is. The pure sport that it is. You gotta love that. There’s a lot of respect in Japan and you don’t realise it and first, but then you just really love it once you get to know what’s going on.”
Shinsuke Nakamura:
“First of all, Shinsuke’s awesome. He’s his own wrestler, there’s nobody like him, he’s very unorthodox but he’s his own man. You won’t see another wrestler and go, ‘Shinsuke copied him’, that’s not it. If anything, you could say he does a little Michael Jackson stuff, which makes him so different from everybody else, he’s flamboyant; this guy has all the tricks of the trade. At the same time, he will kick your head off.”