On WWE television, Karrion Kross and AJ Styles really don't like each other.
For one reason or another, Scarlett identified the “Phenomenal One” as the next performer to challenge her husband via her tarot cards, and ever since, The OC has been firmly in the sights of Kross, who still has the “Killer” mentality that made him an elite performer in NXT even if his success hasn't followed him to the main roster since returning to the promotion a little over a year ago.
And yet, while there is no love lost between Styles and Kross even after the former secured a commanding win on the most recent edition of SmackDown, when the camera stop rolling, and the proverbial gloves come off, the “Herald Of Doomsday” has incredible respect for the second leader of the Bullet Club, as he noted to Konnan on his Keepin' It 100 podcast.
“He’s amazing to work with. He’s the best. The thing that stands out to me with him was, he has a ring IQ like nobody that I’ve probably ever met. I’ve met people with super high ring IQs. For anyone who’s not in the loop of really what I mean by that, it’s just how you would structure a match for the time and place and people involved. The way he sees wrestling, he was ahead of his time in my opinion, when he was coming up in TNA, and I still think in a lot of aspects, he’s still ahead of his time, even present day,” Kross said via WrestleZone.
“I think there’s things he’s doing, there’s nuances and things that people aren’t even picking up that people will study in probably a decade from now, going, ‘He was the only one doing that.’ I won’t say what it is, but if you know, you know when you watch his work. He’ll bring it. He’s someone I can get in the ring with where I know he’s gonna punch me in the face, and I’m good with it, and he knows I’m good with it. He knows that I’m gonna suplex him on his head, so people are gonna get their money’s worth when we work.”
What does the future hold for Kross and Styles? Are they going to continue to feud for the foreseeable future, leading to even more mixed tag team matches featuring Mia Yim and Scarlett? Or could Kross faction up and add two more performers to his group in order to better match up with the four-person OC, performers like the Grizled Young Vets in NXT, or even something less conventional like Drew Gulak and Charlie Dempsey or the Creed Brothers? Either way, Kross isn't going to scoff at working more matches with the “Phenomenal One,” as it's clear there's nothing but respect between the duo.
AJ Styles reveals that he never felt like “The Guy” in TNA.
Sitting down for an interview with Mark Andrews as part of My Love Letter to Wrestling, AJ Styles was asked about his most expansive run in professional wrestling before landing in WWE, where he was the face of TNA from 2003 through 2013.
… or was he? While many fans associate Jeff Jarrett's promotion with the “Phenomenal One,” in Styles' opinion, he never felt like he was pushed like an Ace, with performers like Kurt Angle and Sting taking the spots at the top of the card.
“The guy for Impact is what most people saw me but I wasn’t the guy to them. I was just AJ Styles, who had been here. But their guy was more of a guy who had been from WWE. I think that’s who they looked to do pretty much everything,” AJ Styles said via SEScoops.
“I don’t think I was ever that guy for them; at least in their eyes. I think in the fans’ eyes, they go ‘that’s our guy,' but as far as the Dixie Carters of the world, they were like, ‘it’s more Kurt [Angle] or Sting, it’s not AJ.'”
While Styles may not have felt like he was the top guy at the time for one reason or another, when the story of TNA pre-Impact is written at some point in the future, Styles will undoubtedly go down as the John Cena of the promotion, as, despite cutting his teeth on the indies, Styles was by far the promotion's top homegrown talent and that became all the more clear when ex-WWE/WCW guys like Sting, Hulk Hogan, and Kurt Angles started calling the Impact Zone home.
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