AJ Styles was well-known to wrestling fans long before he arrived in WWE and like Kenny Omega or The Young Bucks, it's hard to fathom him not going by that name in the company. Well, like a number of other wrestlers who have had their identities changed after coming to WWE (Kenta became Hideo Itami, for example), there was some talk of the Phenomenal One getting a new moniker for his debut.
"When Triple H and I were talking, he said, ‘I don’t know if we’ll be able to keep your name.’ I said, ‘That’s fine, I’ll be any name you want me to be called, except I do have this huge AJ tattoo on my side so that might be a problem,'" Styles revealed, pointing out the obvious problem with renaming a man known as AJ Styles who just so happens to have half of that name on his body!
As for the decision not to change his (and Hell in a Cell opponent Samoa Joe) name, Styles added: "I think it worked out for the best because we weren’t taken and being changed into something else. We were the same characters that they saw from different companies and that they were familiar with and people were already invested in. I think that was a good move by WWE."
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