AJ Styles on He Never Thought About Doing A Retirement Tour Since He Didn’t Need One, His Decision to Retire at Royal Rumble 2026, Gunther Being His Final In-Ring Opponent, His Match with John Cena at WWE Crown Jewel Perth, & More

A recent episode of the Insight with Chris Van Vliet podcast featured WWE Hall of Famer AJ Styles as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Styles’ thoughts about why he never thought about doing a potential retirement tour for his in-ring career similar to John Cena.

“No, not at all. I didn’t need one. It was perfectly fine the way I was doing it. In fact, not a lot of people do. So I saw Cody (Rhodes) and John (Cena) calling their match at WrestleMania — I believe it was the one that I was supposed to retire at — and I kind of went up to him and I go, ‘Hey, this is… our last WrestleManias.’ He’s like, ‘Huh?’ I was like, ‘Yeah.’ So it was kind of cool to be there for his last run, and I credit John for that. It wasn’t about the tour; it was about making money for WWE and him getting his flowers at the same time.”

Styles also gave his thoughts about his decision to retire at this past January’s Royal Rumble 2026 event instead of at this past April’s WrestleMania 42 event and the special significance Royal Rumble has on his wrestling career.

“That wasn’t my pay-per-view or PLE. That’s not where I started. For me to be able to debut and then end it at the Royal Rumble — and I don’t care that it was in Saudi Arabia — it’s still the Royal Rumble. That meant something to me. I know there’s people who have WrestleMania as their big PLE, but mine was the Royal Rumble.”

Styles also gave his thoughts about Gunther being his final opponent and revealed it wasn’t his choice.

“That wasn’t up to me. It was up to the story. He had retired Goldberg, he had retired John Cena. Why not retire AJ Styles?”

Styles also gave his thoughts about his belief that he made WWE CCO Paul “Triple” Levesque feel bad after learning that Gunther would be competing in the Men’s Royal Rumble match after retiring him.

“I just was questioning everything. A normal, sane AJ Styles would not question this; it would just be what it is. Even the moment where I found out GUNTHER was in the Royal Rumble, and I think that it already been explained that he was in the Royal Rumble, and that I got this match, but I was like, ‘What the freak?’ I think I made Triple H feel awful about, oh man, I didn’t think about that. When reality is, nobody thought about that; nobody did, nobody cared, even when GUNTHER came out at the Royal Rumble and got beat. In fact, it should have made more sense that he got beat because he was in the ring with AJ Styles. He got exhausted in that match; of course he’s not going to win the Royal Rumble. So I just got weird man. So, my apologies to everyone who I acted that way — and I was just in a weird state of mind.” 

Styles also gave his thoughts about his match against John Cena at this past October’s WWE Crown Jewel: Perth event and his belief that he was not originally scheduled to face off against Cena.

“Well, it was the opportunity to throw back to every guy that we ever wrestled that meant a lot to us and that’s all it was. I mean, we didn’t have much of a story, so we had to tell one in the ring. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to wrestle him. I don’t care what anybody says. I don’t know who called it, but I know that I wasn’t in the picture. Something else needed to happen. I don’t know what that was, someone’s gonna have to tell that story because I don’t know. I’m just positive that I wasn’t the guy that was supposed to wrestle him. Nothing, never a talk of me having a match with John (Cena). Listen, I just assume I’m not that guy. I’m not that guy again. Sometimes I feel like even though I’ve been in WWE for 10 years, I’m not a WWE guy… That was just one of those times.”

Styles also gave his thoughts about the emotional moment he had with Shane “Hurricane” Helms backstage following his in-ring retirement match.

“It got emotional, because when I went back in Gorilla, it seemed like most of our roster was there waiting on me. Abyss pulls me in like a big brother. The way he pulled me in, and everybody’s just kind of there hugging me and stuff like that. It was shortly after that when I was done hugging everybody, freaking really hit me. I knew it was about to happen, so I had to get away from everybody, and I tried. They had a locker room away from everybody else that I’d found that they were storing luggage in, so I was like, I’ll just change it here. It’s quiet, it’s cold, it’s nice. So I was changing there all by myself with the luggage. I kind of got back there. I ran in there, and I thought I closed the door behind me, but apparently it didn’t. It just bounced right wide open. I had to stand there for a second and just gather my thoughts and shed a couple tears because A.J. Styles is no longer wrestling again. That was tough, but it was okay. I just needed Shane Helms being the first one to come in there and he knew what was up. I think he’s been through that somewhat before, kind of gave me a hug. I just needed to get that out, and I needed that hug from Shane, and that was okay. It was emotional. I don’t know how to explain it any more than that.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5