AJ Styles Reflects On TNA Return At Slammiversary, Hoping He Can Do A Match But Can’t Promise That

It was a special night for Styles.

For the first time since December 2013, A.J. Styles appeared for TNA Wrestling. He returned to the company at Slammiversary and embraced newly crowned X Division Champion Leon Slater.

Styles’ comeback was documented by TNA for their Slammiversary documentary. Styles was interviewed for it and shared that he hopes a future match in TNA can come about, but he cannot promise that. Styles added that he would have been in the company forever if the situation had not panned out as it did. He then went on to heap more praise on Slater.

“Tonight was the perfect night for me. It was an opportunity for me to come and see the fans face to face, something I haven’t done in a really long time, and WWE said, ‘Yeah, sure. Go do that.’ You don’t see that every day. So the opportunity just to come and visit and share some time with ‘em is pretty amazing. I hope there’s something special as far as a match goes but I can’t promise that. I can’t promise you tomorrow what’s gonna happen to me. I can tell you this: I was very excited. Even I had the butterflies tonight.

People were excited to see A.J. Styles, the same guy that they saw how many years ago? I don’t even know but it was over a decade now. To come back and be in that ring, it’s special, dude. It’s always gonna be special. It’s like the first girl you’ve ever loved, right? She’s always gonna be special to you. This was my first love. I would have been here forever, had things not went the way that it did. But, things needed to go the way they should because I’m right where God wanted me tonight. So I’m very blessed, very thankful to be able to come here tonight and Leon (Slater) is a special kid. Enjoy him. He’s different, and he’s incredible. He’s way more talented than most of us could ever be, and I wish him nothing but the best. Just the start of an amazing career for him.”

The first-ever TNA X Division Champion also dove into how much the company has grown from a locker room standpoint since he was last there.

“There’s a time where they forgot where they came from, and by no means is it the same people that own it today. They wanted to be something different, rather than who we were, and at the end of the day, it cost ‘em, and if we’d just stayed on the path, man, who knows where we’d be right now? But I’m glad to see that now everybody’s pulling for — that was the first time in a long time I’ve seen the whole company watching the same match because they were so interested in what’s going to happen. That’s awesome. They’re pulling for each other, you want that. You don’t have to worry about people stabbing each other in the back to get to the top. No, no. They want you to be there. They wanna see everybody there. They wanna see everybody have a great match. That’s how you become a successful company. That’s what it takes. As long as that’s available and ready and people can see it, man, TNA’s gonna grow.”

Styles is gearing up to be in action at WWE SummerSlam. He’ll be challenging Dominik Mysterio for the Intercontinental Championship. Styles pinned Mysterio in a six-person tag match on the July 28th Monday Night Raw.

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the original source with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.