YMMV / AJ Styles

• Arc Fatigue:
  • As much as the fanbase loved AJ and Christopher Daniels' matches together, they were sick of the two feuding, as it seemed to happen every couple of years, with Daniels always being the heel for the same damn reason. The matches are great of course, but there's a limit to having a match so many times before even the great ones seem repetitive and boring.
  • His highly anticipated feud with Shinsuke Nakamura in 2018. After months of justified anticipation following Nakamura winning the Royal Rumble, their WrestleMania 34 match was a bit of a letdown. Their following matches after Nakamura's Face–Heel Turn at the Greatest Royal Rumble and the no-DQ match at Backlash 2018, both ending in double KO, and their constant back-and-forth over the title in Smackdown Live (including the "whoever wins the match decides the stipulation" match in an episode) didn't do them any favors - nor did the constant fixation on nut shots that seemed to overtake it. The feud was finally put to rest with the Last Man Standing match at Money in the Bank 2018 - and that in itself caused a Broken Base as some people thought WWE would have been best served to have Nakamura win the title, and that the decisive way in which AJ won the feud was just one more example of WWE shafting a talented foreign star.
• Awesome Ego: They don't call him "The Phenomenal One" for nothing. Even after WrestleMania 33, he became a face, but was as confident as ever.
• Awesome Music: His WWE theme, "Phenomenal", is a swell piece of rapping with a nice intro and cool lyrics, even though the theme wasn't meant for him.
• Broken Base
  • His sendoff in TNA via the unification match with Magnus. Was it an awesome showcase of what a Determinator he is and a credit to him as the face of TNA that it took him getting screwed by Dixie Carter and half the roster for Magnus to beat him, or was it an overbooked clusterfuck which buried everybody involved and a harbinger of the end for for the company? This is only intensified by the rampant speculation as to whether AJ has secretly re-signed, agreed to re-sign, or is still in talks with TNA and thus may possibly come back at a later time (which, the way the story went seems to be teasing on some level) or whether his career with TNA actually completely done forever in a cruel display of Killed Off for Real.
  • His IWGP Title win over Kazuchika Okada, did it come too soon? Was AJ given too many wins over him?
  • After his TNA run there were a few cases of opposition wrestlers getting injured by his Styles Clash finisher in a short period, such as Preston City's Lionheart and longtime WWE jobber Yoshi Tatsu. There are three parties who discuss this: The party who believes the finisher is dangerous and the fault lies with AJ, the party who thinks the fault solely lies with the opposition who doesn't move his body properly to safely sell the move, and the party who believes the opposition is at fault but also believes the finisher is just too dangerous to use in any case. Luke Hawx admitted that the instinctual reaction to tuck ones head in when being held upside down leads to injuries when AJ then proceeds to drop down face ward but still said the injury is Styles fault, because if he was strong enough to lift men higher, then it wouldn't matter whether or not they took the move "correctly". WWE seem to have caught wind of this and made AJ use his Springboard Forearm Smash (now known as the Phenomenal Forearm) as his primary finisher ^note  the Styles Clash is attempted often, only for the opponent to counter it and the few times it does connect, it rarely ends the match which is a much safer move. At least for the person taking it that is.
  • When he, Anderson, and Gallows decided to leave New Japan around the turn of the new year from 2015 to 2016, they started talking with TNA and made some sort of agreement for a potential return. Somewhere along the line, WWE swooped in with what turned out to be an irresistingly high contract offer. Amidst speculation as to their futures, TNA disseminated this information…but then the method and timing and details of that reveal caused even more of this trope. Was it an honest message to their fans that yes, they tried to get AJ Styles back, which biased industry reporters immediately jumped to condemn? Was it a blatant attempt to throw AJ and his friends under the bus when they didn't get their way? Or was it a mixture of both, where they felt the need to say something to the fans but communicated it poorly in an amateurish manner?
  • His WWE theme song. Some really dig it and think it's catchy enough with the "They Don't Want None" hook. Others pan it as suffering from the typical CFO$ song-looping pattern and focusing too much on the Southern redneck aspect of AJ's personality, not to mention being distinctly calmer in both tempo and instruments than his TNA, ROH, and NJPW themes. The latter sentiment has gotten worse since Road Dogg's admission on "Table for 3" that the theme was originally recorded for James Storm had Storm stuck around after his brief sojourn to NXT.
• Designated Villain:
  • His post-WrestleMania 32 feud with Roman Reigns edges him into this. WWE so badly wants Reigns to come off as more sympathetic that it's trying to cast doubt on whether AJ has his old friends from Bullet Club Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson working on his behalf and giving him an unfair advantage. Considering Styles and Bullet Club's popularity is part of why Anderson and Gallows are even there, this has only resulted in Rooting for the Empire — at least to whatever extent Styles may be part of the Empire, and no, not the Roman one. In fact, AJ comes off as the only true face of the entire feud. The Club keeps trying to push him into doing things he doesn't want to do, the Usos keep attacking him unprovoked when he tries to play peacemaker and when he defends himself, Roman gets pissed and attacks him wholesale. The feud then became how long would AJ stand around and take the abuse of essentially every other man in the feud. By the week before Extreme Rules AJ started destroying The Bloodline with steel chairs any chance he got and outright SNAPPED at Extreme Rules when The Usos (going further than the Club themselves) screwed him out of the title by stopping his pin attempt. With losing his opportunities at the title, losing his best friends by trying to separate from them business wise, and losing his shot at Money in the Bank by losing to Kevin Owens, this running storyline might as well be called The Loss of AJ Styles' Sanity.
  • Which led to its natural conclusion with Styles, likely finally having enough of doing the right thing in WWE only to get nowhere, finally completes his Face–Heel Turn while rejoining with The Club by blindsiding John Cena and brutally assaulting him FOUR TIMES on his return on Memorial Day.
• Draco in Leather Pants: No less than ex-World of Stardom champion Kairi Hojo cited Bullet Club as "cool", citing Styles and The Young Bucks as her reason. Styles has even been seen taking photos with members of the promotion's locker room, despite his group being against Puroresu tradition and values.
  • At the end of 2016, Styles is arguably the most over full-time talent in the WWE currently despite being a heel. His personality doesn't give much to like about him, he's the usual dickhead heel who's arrogant of his talents. But AJ is so damn good in the ring that the crowds can't help but love him. To the point that Dean Ambrose, one of the most over babyfaces they have, tended to get some negative reception because he was a threat to AJ's title reign.
• Fanon Discontinuity: People declared TNA dead the moment AJ announced his departure. Notably, there was a sentiment that AJ's career was dead too until he went to Japan and became the new face of the Bullet Club, including winning the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, to the point that fans were practically begging WWE to snatch him up for NXT like they did with Samoa Joe. And then WWE did snatch him up—for the Royal Rumble. Straight to main roster.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Frequently held up as one of the brightest parts of TNA, and even TNA's most harsh critics saying he's easily one of the best parts of the company (with their really scathing critics saying he's about the only good thing going for it.)
  • It's to the point where it's almost universally agreed upon that he should've been the face of TNA, if anything for his loyalty, having been there since the very beginning and sticking around despite everything TNA put him through. His leaving was considered to be the death knell for the company.
  • It doesn't help that only couple months after he left, TNA veterans Christopher Daniels, Frankie Kazarian, and Chris Sabin soon left the company as well.
  • When his merchandise sold out in a couple hours after his Royal Rumble debut and his WWE theme made it to iTunes's top 100, you know he's popular. All AJ did was show up and he was already the second most popular face on the active roster, behind Dean Ambrose, and that's because Ambrose is more established with the casual fans. Even after turning heel, he's never truly lost the support of the crowd, becoming the company's top heel alongside Kevin Owens, the two of them often being the most entertaining superstars on the roster.
  • As of late 2017, YouTube's search algorithm for "aj styles is the best" has an autocomplete suggestion "aj styles is the best wrestler in the world". The only other wrestlers with anything similar are John Cena, who has a suggestion completing to to "john cena is the best wrestler ever", and Roman Reigns, who has an autocomplete from "roman reigns is" to "roman reigns is the perfect choice as the guy".^note Although he also has one to "roman reigns is garbage", so take from what it what you will. Cena and Reigns are The Chosen One of the past 12 years and of the foreseeable future respectively, while Styles, for all intents and purposes, is a guy pushing forty with less than two years as a WWE wrestler, which means he earned this distinction with his performances both within those two years and beforehand everywhere else, with far less help from "the machine" than either of them have had.
• Fan Nickname: Fitting his perpetual Ensemble Dark Horse staus, he's called "the best wrestler in the world" more often than anyone else since CM Punk abdicated the title.
• Friendly Fandoms: AJ's signing (and immediate success) with WWE has resulted in this between WWE, TNA and NJPW's fandoms.
• Fridge Horror:
  • During the Claire Lynch storyline, the week before AJ's match to either accept the blame or get tested in the Claire Lynch storyline AJ had this to say to Kaz and Daniels backstage:
    "You know what? You both know I was drugged. I mean, God knows I'd have to be to sleep with a foot like Claire."
    • And suddenly, that main picture that Claire, the crack addict that AJ and Dixie Carter were helping to get clean, presented as "proof" of her "illicit affair" with AJ? You know, the one in which she's posing seductively on his body while he looks dead-asleep? If Kaz and Daniels' allegations were true in any way in the storyline, that would pretty likely mean Claire drugged and raped AJ, got pregnant from it, then somehow proceeded to perpetuate the notion with help from Kaz and Daniels that if AJ didn't stay with her and raise her child of rape then it made HIM the bad person. Frankly, the whole thing being a lie was the charitable version of the story.
• Genius Bonus: His theme is very similar to "No Sunshine" by DMX, which was the entrance music for Anderson Silva in the UFC. Both Silva and Styles are dominant, decorated and known for supreme speed and agility, albeit in different disciplines.
• Hilarious in Hindsight
  • To WCW viewers who already knew "Air Styles", seeing him paired up with Air Paris was this, considering the two were feuding in NWA Wildside since Paris was managed by Jeff G. Bailey. WCW even pointed out they weren't partners before showing up there as Air Raid.
  • ROH giving him "Also sprach Zarathustra" as entrance music, given his later association with Ric Flair in TNA.
  • His rant to Paul London about finding his own partners and titles to win. Who would of thunk?
  • Not too long after the "Friends of AJ" storyline which culminated in the divorce between the Phenomenal One and TNA…AJ Styles turns up in New Japan with the Bullet Club. And to top it all off he's sort of exchanged signature moves with Prince Devitt, the ex-leader of the Bullet Club who left the same night he came in. Devitt has a Pele-esque overhead kick, albeit more sudden than smooth like AJ's, and AJ occasionally used Bloody Sunday during his time in Bullet Club.
• Growing the Beard: An almost literal case, too. AJ was already considered an, ahem, phenomenal wrestler upon his arrival to NJPW. But he did have to work pretty damn hard to get over as a heel to a Japanese fan base that really wasn't aware of/interested in his career prior. Now? He's putting on phenomenal (ahem) matches left and right. He's also grown quite the beard in Japan, too.
  • His immediate success in the WWE could count as well. In 6 months he was already established as a main eventer. He also seems a lot more confident on the microphone than he was in the past as well, and evolved in to a much more rounded persona since his TNA days.
• Ho Yay:
  • The relationship between AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels was chock full of Ho Yay, even when they were enemies. When they were arguing over the possibility that Daniels could beat Styles, it seemed like a lover's spat that lasted for weeks. Samoa Joe acting like a jealous third party didn't help any. Keep in mind that Christopher Daniels and AJ Styles have named their kids after each other, so this is hardly a relationship that ends when the match does. On the 8/25/11 Impact broadcast, Daniels nearly broke down into tears while explaining why he asked AJ for another rematch (closely resembling an Anguished Declaration of Love) and outright hugged AJ when the rematch was accepted.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The crowd at the 2014 Field of Honor was especially disrespectful, even by ROH standard. But they straightened up after AJ's entrance. Though not as bad as most examples, the general consensus being there weren't any bad matches, just people getting too drunk. Also, enthusiasm for the second Champions Vs Allstars went down considerably when people learned Styles couldn't make it.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "PELE! PELE! PELE! HE HIT THE PELE! IT JUST COMES OUTTA NOWHERE!"
  • THE GAY COMMUNITY? ^Explanation During a call interview from the fans, somebody asked AJ Styles what his thoughts were on his large following of the gay community. Styles being both a very devout Christian and southerner was very surprised by the question. Though in a later interview AJ states he has no problems with the sexuality of people and even jokes about it.
  • Surreal. ^Explanation Numerous fans commented that seeing AJ in WWE was...well, surreal. It quickly caught on to the point that AJ doing anything was surreal, and it's not always said in jest. There are people who still use the exact same word because they can't wrap their heads around, for instance, AJ wrestling John Cena or being on the official WWE 2K17 roster. Oh, and beating Cena clean as a whistle at SummerSlam 2016 and becoming the WWE Champion at Backlash 2016.
  • They don't want none!
  • His "soccer mom" hair has been snarked on by both fans and other wrestlers onscreen. Here's a fan sign comparing him to Molly MacDonald from Arthur.
  • The Earth is round, AJ!^Explanation During an interview, the subject of the Flat Earth myth was brought up, and while he stopped short of saying that he believed it, AJ said that he thought that it brought up "some interesting points" for him. Obviously, this led to several memes bringing up simple proof that the Earth is spherical.
  • RIP AJ 1977-2020^Explanation After AJ lost the Boneyard Match to The Undertaker and was Buried Alive, the fans started making memes and edits to Wikipedia, treating the match as if AJ has died in real life.
• Moment of Awesome: The man has his own page, guys.
• Narm: Attempted a couple of CM Punk-esque Worked Shoot promos. Unfortunately for the first one, it came mere days after A.J. Lee delivered her own Worked Shoot to the Divas division on WWE Raw, with Styles' promo coming off as a poor imitation due to the timing. It wasn't helped by an uninterested crowd who didn't seem to understand what was going on, or that Punk & Lee's promos were more scathing. A part of that is because of AJ's notorious Undying Loyalty to TNA; he's been there since the very beginning, and stuck around despite everything they put him through. Compare that to Punk, who's known for his constant disputes with WWE management — it's harder for such a promo from AJ to blur the line between reality and storyline when your reputation precedes you so well.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Occasionally called people faggots as a heel irritation tactic way back in the early days — as in, 2002 and such, well before YouTube was even a thing. That and THE GAY COMMUNITY thing, along with his being a Southern Christian, has caused him to be slammed in some hard-left circles as a homophobe to this day despite how long ago the incidents in question were or the fact that he was clearly either drawing heat and/or messing with co-workers and friends, or that others — like Larry Zbyszko or Chris Sabin — would freely throw it back at him, no hard feelings had.
  • On a more lighthearted note, AJ breaking a controller in a fit of rage over WWE 2K16 on Up, Up, Down, Down. Has very much become a part of his character on the channel, as AJ's gone on to physically destroy various gaming paraphernalia in fits of rage.
• Poor Communication Kills: This may have come into play with TNA's memo about WWE outbidding them to acquire AJ along with Anderson and Gallows in 2016 which many see as nuking the bridge between AJ and TNA forever. Ostensibly, there's nothing wrong with the organization revealing that they tried to get AJ Styles back and actually came pretty close. In fact, given how they were widely criticized for how they let him leave, ^namely low-balling him after years of being underused when he was the heart and soul of the company, TNA might've felt they had to go public with the details to mollify their fanbase. Trouble is, (1) TNA management already has a terrible rap in the industry as it is; (2) they didn't clearly communicate that no binding contract had been signed yet in their negotiations (unintentionally suggesting there would be legal ramifications even though there was obviously no basis for any legal action); and (3) the memo came out just days before AJ made his debut at the Royal Rumble (which everyone read as TNA trying to screw over AJ's WWE debut).
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity:
  • This line of thinking bit TNA in the ass when they decided they were getting on the AJ Styles hype train no matter what and posted a statement on the TNA website about his contract negotiations with them during the December of 2015, two days before the 2016 Royal Rumble, where AJ was rumored to make his WWE debut. For more on that, see Unintentionally Unsympathetic. Prior to this, the rumor of AJ going to WWE was in no way seen as embarrassing for TNA — AJ had been gone from their promotion for two years and all anyone was talking about were his awesome runs in New Japan Pro-Wrestling and Ring of Honor, and the possibility of his debut in WWE. TNA was regarded as a non-factor, and many believed that unless TNA broke the bank it was highly unlikely that AJ would sign back with them. After they posted the statement, TNA caught a lot of heat with the fans and the wrestling community at large for their actions, and it erased a lot of the good will they had gotten for their imp
• Refrain from Assuming: His WWE theme song "Phenomenal" is not "They Don't Want None".
• Shocking Moments:
  • As one of the original X Division members, he's the hallmark of HSQ for TNA.
  • AJ becoming WWE Champion was an ultimate "Holy Shit!" moment for many fans.
  • Winning the Grand Slam Championship in WWE is an ultimate one, for a man once considered to be a TNA lifer.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: His WWE theme sounds a lot like DMX's "No Sunshine", to the point it was originally mistaken as a remix of said song.
• Unexpected Character: You can tell that he was the last person Roman Reigns expected see in the Royal Rumble — especially in the #3 slot, right after Reigns took out his first opponent in Rusev at #2. There's justification for this: AJ is the first performer in years to have debuted on the main roster without going through developmental first and/or be repackaged. While this used to be a common occurrence during the Monday Night Wars, where popular wrestlers jumped between the WWF and WCW, this has become so rare in recent years that the last time it happened was at Survivor Series 2014, when Sting debuted, and the last time before that was when the original Sin Cara debuted after WrestleMania XXVII — that's in 2011. The only reasons Sting bypassed developmental is because of his age, his status as a part-timer, and the fact that he was far too big a star, thanks to WCW, to go to NXT. Sin Cara skipped developmental since he was a big name in CMLL, but he was still repackaged from his original character Místico, since CMLL owned the trademark. AJ, being the biggest name to have never signed with the company after Sting did and an international star, was most likely viewed in the same capacity and allowed to bypass NXT and, since he was pushing forty and there was no way in hell the company could make him a bigger star coming in than he already was, allowed to keep his name.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • AJ was a dedicated company man and one of the best wrestlers of his generation (see his matches with Okada or Tanahashi in NJPW), he was nonetheless badly treated by TNA management despite being The Face of the company. His departure in 2015 started an exodus of other big TNA stars like Samoa Joe and Christopher Daniels.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Never turn him heel. It will only result in Character Development and people cheering for him even more.
  • Making him a Chaotic Neutral wound up working the exact same way, even moreso as it turned out to be his final year in TNA. Being thrown offers every which way, being appealed to based on helping TNA,^note In his "walking away" segment at the end of 2012 he said he was tired of cleaning up after TNA's messes and doing the right thing and he was gonna start doing his own thing. being threatened by people, given ultimatums, interrupted by fight-hungry wrestlers before he could care enough to answer anybody's questions, Taz being the Only Sane Man at the announce table showing any care for AJ's situation while Tenay and Kennely are calling him the disrespectful one for not saying how high when people tell him to jump; it was a wonder he didn't join Aces And Eights. He pretended to join Aces & Eights so they could help him beat up Kurt Angle some, only to turn against them immediately after taking the kutte and explaining in a TNA YouTube video after the show that the plan all along was to stand alone. Given TNA's infamous love of invasion/takeover angles by heel stables, that was actually admirable. Then he would expand on this over the coming months by claiming that despite being with TNA through everything since day one, nobody aside from him and his family back home truly cared about what he's had to deal with; thus he's become disillusioned with the concept of a hero in wrestling, as well as solely focused on fighting, winning, and making money to put food on his family's table. Even at his darkest and most antisocial state ever, AJ Styles was just so naturally too good to hate you had to wonder if it was all on purpose.
    
    Turns out, it was. He later turned face under the same dark persona, went on a tear, and won the World Heavyweight Championship again before ending up in a rehash of CM Punk vs. Vince McMahon with Dixie as the Vince. Unfortunately, contract negotiations fell through when he was asked to take a 40% pay cut on his new deal due to money troubles, and the storyline ended with Dixie and her Dragon with an Agenda, Magnus, screwing AJ out of the company by turning a match to determine an undisputed champion into a glorified 9-on-2 gang beatdown in which Magnus pinned AJ without even wrestling. AJ's leaving TNA certainly saddened many fans, though most (if not all) didn't blame him for his decision — it just made them wish he had been treated better and put the company under an even worse light.
  • Him entering New Japan Pro-Wrestling as the new face and eventually champion of the Bullet Club was not only under the same dark persona (and thus backstory) that he spent his final year in TNA in, but has seen him continue to wrestle as a face outside of New Japan, giving the entire club itself its first sense of positive representation beyond Evil Is Cool. By mid-2015 this along with Bullet Club's general cool factor has exploded their popularity on the circuit to the point that the club itself is face in America because stateside companies have outright given up on trying to book them as heels!
    • Even in Japan, his G1 Climax 2014 match against Minoru Suzuki — leading the Suzukigun stable, just behind Bullet Club in heelishness — stands out because of Suzuki wrestling so evilly, complete with a ref bump and a run-in contrasting with AJ Styles wrestling and winning cleanly, that for one night the Bullet Club^note specifically Gallows and Anderson who ran off the interfering TAKA Michinoku, though they were themselves hustled off by Suzukigun's Harry Smith, Jr. and Lance Archer were actually treated by the crowd as faces! The crowd's post-match chanting for AJ visibly affected him, too.
    • When Bullet Club turned on him thanks to Kenny Omega being a Bastard Understudy as New Japan's way of sending him off when he gave notice that he was finally WWE-bound at the start of 2016, guess what the crowd did?
  • A Real Life example is TNA trying to throw him under the bus by posting this statement on their website, using fancy, PR-language to paint AJ as some treacherous backstabber. Instead, all it did was make AJ look more sympathetic. TNA had their chance with him and they blew it by trying to lowball him. Many see it as them trying to ruin the prosperity of a loyal performer that they treated terribly just because he decided to take another offer, and if anything, only generated more excitement for AJ's debut in WWE. Thus, except for really hardcore TNA fans, the Internet proceeded to put TNA on blast and mercilessly mock them to no end, especially considering TNA's usual attitude of snapping up anyone with any sort of previous presence in WWE and pushing them to the moon even over their own loyal workers, such as AJ himself.
• The Woobie:
  • AJ, thanks to a pretty rough 2012, which not only saw him become the victim of a complicated scheme by Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian to destroy his reputation via a woman named Claire Lynch, but also saw him become locked out of the TNA title scene until Bound For Glory 2013 became this.