5 WWE Stars AJ Styles Needs To Face Before He Retires
In professional wrestling, there is only one person that will forever be undefeated, and that person, is Father Time. Never will he ever be left looking at the lights, and even the strongest and most popular stars will end up eating the pin or forced to succumb to the idea of retirement. "The Phenomenal" AJ Styles is one of the few WWE Superstars who, while he has been putting up a good fight in recent years, is edging closer and closer to leaving his boots and gloves in the ring and leaving the world of wrestling behind.
Styles has been very open about potentially retiring in the next few years. In 2024, he admitted that "the finish line is somewhere in the future," and that being away from his family is a major reason why he wants to stop wrestling, because he's already missed so many major events in their lives since debuting 27 years ago. The former WWE Champion signed a one-year extension with WWE earlier this year, and despite many fans on social media believing that he will eventually jump to AEW, especially considering he was pitched to be a part of the company when it started in 2019, Styles looks like he will be wrapping up his career within the walls of WWE.
This begs the question of who should Styles face before he bids farewell to the squared circle. There are numerous names from outside of WWE who would all be perfect for a Styles retirement run, from Will Ospreay and Samoa Joe in AEW, to the new TNA X-Division Champion Leon Slater, who Styles personally gave his own personal congratulations to at the Slammiversary pay-per-view on July 20. However, we're going to stick to the WWE roster for this one because there's already plenty of choice.
So sit back, relax, and join us on a journey to Gainesville, Georgia, home to one of the greatest wrestlers of his generation, to list five WWE Superstars who AJ Styles should wrestle one-on-one before he retires.
CM Punk
Considering we've already been given a taster of what a match between AJ Styles and CM Punk looks like in 2025, it's only right to start off with the "Second City Saint" as one man who should absolutely lock horns with Styles before he, and to a lesser extent Punk, retires.
There was a point in time where Styles was part of the very, very long list of people who didn't like Punk for one reason another, joining the likes Kevin Owens, Seth Rollins, and virtually anyone who was friends with The Elite in 2022. Back in 2020, Punk called out Styles on social media not speaking up about racial equality during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in the COVID-19 pandemic. Styles would retaliate months later by saying that he wasn't give any energy to a man that he has literally zero respect for, and someone who he can't stand.
Once Punk returned to WWE after being fired by AEW in 2023, Styles admitted to being concerned about the "Straight Edge Superstar" being back in the company that made him sick to begin with, primarily due to how he had conducted himself in the final months of his AEW run, a company where a number of AJ's closest friends work to this day. However, Punk has had zero issues since returning to WWE, causing Styles to admit that he was wrong, and that he would like to cross paths with Punk once again.
Fast forward to today and the two men got to interact in a Triple Threat match on the June 2 episode of "WWE Raw," but anyone who knows their history knows they can produce magic together. The two men shared the ring many times in the early 2000s for companies like Ring of Honor and IWA-Mid South, but with over 20 years more experience in their tanks, and with all of the miles on their bodies forcing them to work a different type of match, Styles vs. Punk would be a match that would have fans from all corners of the wrestling world watching.
Roman Reigns
Just in case you wanted to feel old, we are nearing a full decade since AJ Styles made his WWE debut during the 2016 Royal Rumble. Entering at number three to a pop that made Vince McMahon genuinely confused as he thought no one knew who Styles actually was, the first man he ever came into contact with in a WWE ring was none other than Roman Reigns.
At the time, Roman was still in his "Big Dog" phase where he would still come out to The Shield's entrance music, dressed in Shield gear, and wrestle in a way where WWE management wanted you to remember that Roman Reigns was indeed in a group called The Shield. Younger fans won't remember, but this didn't really go over well with the WWE Universe at the time, and while crowds will descend into mass hysteria whenever he shows up these days, back in 2016, whenever Roman looked at you with his blue contact lenses, you wanted to boo him all the way back to Edmonton Eskimos.
To combat this, WWE would routinely pit Roman against people who were seen as "internet darlings," which was WWE code for wrestlers who made their name on the independent scene and were good enough to be WWE Champion if they just worked a little slower. Styles was the ultimate "internet darling" at the time as he was coming off a two-year run with New Japan Pro Wrestling where many people saw him as the best wrestler in the world, and he was so good, he got a 2016 WWE audience to enjoy watching Roman Reigns wrestle. Their feud over the WWE Championship in the spring of that year is seen as one of AJ's best feuds, and one of the first signs that all the "You Can't Wrestle" chants directed at Roman might be wearing thin.
Roman and AJ have crossed paths since 2016, but Styles has never had a one-on-one program with the man everyone know acknowledges as their "Tribal Chief," and considering Roman was the first person Styles interacted with, they would need to run it back before he retires.
Je'Von Evans
Not a name many would expect to see on a list like this, but this is more of an idea that could be fleshed out with various different people.
We aren't exaggerating when we say that AJ Styles is one of the most influential wrestlers of the 21st century. Some of the top stars in the industry today have cited Styles as a major influence on both how they wrestle and why they got into the business, with AEW's Will Ospreay being very open about how he became a wrestler because of "The Phenomenal One." Out of everyone in WWE right now who could potentially fit into that 2000s TNA X-Division shaped opponent for Styles to face in a student vs. master-esque matchup, Je'Von Evans is a perfect candidate.
Styles was always known as someone who would seemingly be able to invent new moves on the fly during his prime years in TNA's X-Division, and Evans thinks the same way. He is always trying to do new things to stand out from the crowd, which is why he has become such a fan favorite in "WWE NXT." He bounces around the ring in a similar fashion to how AJ did when he used to wrestle the likes of Christopher Daniels in TNA, using all of his surroundings to do things that literally no one else in WWE is physically able to do.
A match between Styles and Evans today would resemble AJ wrestling a young version of himself, something that he has done in the past to certain extents, but now that he is a lot bigger, and wrestles a much more grounded style, Styles would be able to lead a young star like Evans through a one-on-one encounter and make him a star in the process. It would be like Styles is wrestling the 2004 version of himself, and style clashes (pun sort of intended) like that would add an interesting wrinkle into AJ's retirement run.
The Motor City Machine Guns
For a company that currently has a working relationship with TNA Wrestling, it's actually difficult to find anyone working today who broke through in TNA at the same time as AJ did. Samoa Joe is in AEW, Christopher Daniels retired in AEW earlier this year, and if you look at who currently works as a producer in WWE, you'll see names like Bobby Roode, Petey Williams, and Chris "Abyss" Parks, who are all TNA originals like AJ, but have all since hung up their boots. However, WWE acquired two men in 2024 who are not only members of that early 2000s group of super workers that made their names in TNA, but are also still wrestling today; The Motor City Machine Guns.
Styles wrestled both Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley dozens of times during his time in TNA, and even crossed paths with them in companies like Ring of Honor, International Wrestling Cartel, and even CMLL as TNA had a working relationship with the Mexican promotion in 2008. In Sabin's case, he worked with Styles as both an opponent and as a partner in TNA, with Styles even admitting that Sabin was responsible for the scariest bump he ever took in a wrestling match during a 2025 interview with Chris Van Vliet. As for Shelley, their interactions weren't as frequent, but were always exciting, and amazingly, they have never ended up tagging together throughout their careers.
Now that they are all in WWE together, some sort of match has to happened between the Guns and Styles. Whether that's Styles wrestling Shelley and Sabin individually, or Styles finding himself a partner and having a tag team feud, any variation absolutely needs to happen before Styles retires. If you really wanted to push the boat out and make things as TNA as humanly possible, let Roode, Williams, or Abyss produce the match, and you'll be able to transport fans back to the Impact Zone all over again.
Gunther
"The Ring General" is very quickly becoming the final boss character of WWE that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson thinks he is. Gunther retired Goldberg just a few weeks ago, put an end to Jey Uso's WWE World Heavyweight Championship reign, and on his best day genuinely looks like the most unstoppable force in all of wrestling today. Amazingly, Styles and Gunther have only ever wrestled each other at WWE house shows, meaning that they are at the very least familiar with each other, but as far as televised matches, not a single one, not even a tag team match or a Royal Rumble, has ever happened between the two men.
This entry goes a little further though, because we've been talking about men that Styles should face on his retirement run when it does eventually happen, but we haven't discussed who should be the final opponent. Who should be the man to retire "The Phenomenal" AJ Styles? The answer is Gunther.
If you really want to add weight to the match assuming the WWE World Heavyweight Championship is on the line, making Gunther Styles' final opponent would build "The Ring General" up even more as an immovable object atop of WWE. The man who other wrestlers tell their children scary stories about as he's the one old wrestlers go to when they want one more great match, and a reason to remind them why they're retiring in the first place. Gunther is also a perfect foil for high flyers, and while we've already noted that Styles is a lot more grounded in 2025, he can still deliver The Phenomenal Forearm with devastating effect. Gunther vs. Styles has to happen, and when it's all said and done, Gunther should be able to boast that he retired AJ Styles.