AJ Styles Opens Up About WWE Retirement and New Role

July 23, 2026

AJ Styles professional wrestling career came to an end earlier this year at the WWE Royal Rumble when he lost his retirement match to Gunther.

Styles was recently a guest on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet, and they discussed his retirement in depth.

CVV: So, how’s retirement treating you?

AJ: “Oh, wow. It’s funny, because I think I’m gone a little bit more than I was when I was actually working. I don’t know how that works, but to get the chance to go down to the Performance Center and work with those men and women down there, it’s pretty awesome. It scratches that itch, and being involved with Evolve is awesome. I produced a couple of matches, which I didn’t think I’d enjoy, but I love it. I’ve heard this is how it all starts, you start producing, the next thing you know, you get heavily involved with certain kind of things. But it’s really cool to be working with the young talent and the light bulb going off. I’m trying to give my moves away, like, ‘Hey, try this, try this, try this, try this, I’m not gonna use it anymore.’ I’m having fun.”

CVV: How long had you been thinking about retiring?

AJ: “Well, I was gonna retire before the Royal Rumble at WrestleMania [41], but I just come back from my foot injury, and it just didn’t seem right. I was feeling kind of good, actually. Once I got my foot back in order, I was like, man, and there was some like, I don’t know. I’m sure money was a thing, because I didn’t ask for more money, I just wanted to extend it. But then again, they did right by me, paying me well, and so I know that was an issue. But then we finally got that in order, and I was like, all right, here we go. I’m not saying I didn’t get weird near the end of knowing I was going to retire or leave WWE; I got weird, dude.”

CVV: In what way?

AJ: “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 had 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.”

CVV: Do you miss it?

AJ: “I don’t miss falling down, I don’t miss getting hurt, I don’t miss any of that, but you’re always going to miss that part of the excitement that you’re about to go to the ring and have a great match. You’re going to miss that, that’s just the high you don’t get from anything else. But again, I get to go down the Performance Center and scratch that itch and just throw myself into helping these performers down at the PC get better.”