WWE HOFer AJ Styles Thinks Recent Match Salvaged His Feud With Shinsuke Nakamura

On the road to his eventual retirement earlier this year, AJ Styles finally got to have one more match with Shinsuke Nakamura at WWE Saturday Night's Main Event on January 24. The match came nearly eight years after the two men feuded over the WWE Championship in 2018, which was a feud that had a lot of excitement surrounding it but ultimately fell short in a wave of low blows. Styles was asked about his most recent match with Nakamura during a recent episode of "The Phenomenally Retro Podcast" and despite their WWE WrestleMania 34 match having some supporters, what the two men did this year was what they wanted to do in 2018.

"He was not happy about how everything went across you know?" Styles said. "To this day, he was like 'No nut shots, we're not doing anything.' I get it man, the match we should have had was the match that we had at Saturday Night's Main Event at that time. We were trying to be different and trying to go above expectations, but the expectations for that match to be great were so high. So high, just–it would have been difficult to meet those expectations, and it was. Then you know, we got to have our match that we wanted at Saturday Night's Main Event and I thought that was an unbelievable match, I thought it was awesome, I loved it, I loved that match."

The expectations for the match came from their now iconic bout in New Japan Pro Wrestling at NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 10 in 2016. The two men fought over the IWGP Intercontinental Championship in what is widely considered to be one of the best matches of the modern era, with the bout having extra weight as they would both leave for WWE just a few weeks later.

Please credit "Phenomenally Retro Podcast" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.