AJ Styles reveals what he originally had planned for his WWE retirement

In a video published to WWE’s YouTube channel, AJ Styles revealed that he originally had plans to retire at WrestleMania 41. However, Styles suffered a foot injury in October 2024 that kept him out of action until the 2025 Royal Rumble match.

Here is what Styles stated…

“Everybody wants to retire at WrestleMania, right? The biggest show of the year that we do. And I was going to do exactly that, but I had just come back from an injury that I was supposed to — you know, it was supposed to retire me, because that injury retires most people. But once I got healed up and was comfortable enough running and doing what I needed to do to be AJ Styles, it just didn’t feel right to come back for two months just to retire. It didn’t seem right. And I thought, what better way to leave than on the pay-per-view where you debuted? [Royal Rumble]”