{"id":10392,"date":"2016-02-09T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2016-02-09T18:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/?p=10392"},"modified":"2016-02-09T15:21:50","modified_gmt":"2016-02-09T21:21:50","slug":"10392","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2016\/02\/09\/10392\/","title":{"rendered":"A.J. Styles says being &#8220;liberated&#8221; as free agent prepared him for WWE, talks New Japan run, Tanahashi &#038; Nakamura, more"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"pwtor-1660657758\" class=\"pwtor-before-content pwtor-entity-placement\"><hr \/><b>SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)... <\/b>\r\n\r\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/widget.spreaker.com\/player?show_id=3076978&theme=light&playlist=false&playlist-continuous=false&autoplay=false&live-autoplay=false&chapters-image=true&episode_image_position=right&hide-logo=false&hide-likes=false&hide-comments=false&hide-sharing=false&hide-download=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"140px\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\r\n<hr \/><\/div><p>A.J. Styles says he is beginning his WWE run after feeling &#8220;liberated&#8221; by developing his own persona outside of any promotion.<\/p>\n<p>Styles left TNA at the end of 2013 and began a new free agent journey at the start of 2014. Styles called it &#8220;betting on himself&#8221; to be successful on his own before the recent trend began.<\/p>\n<p>Two years later, Styles took a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2016\/01\/22\/8777\/\" target=\"_blank\">contract offer from WWE over TNA<\/a> to begin a late-career run on the biggest U.S. stage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI tell you what\u2019s liberating, is the fact that you were able to bet on yourself, and it paid off,&#8221; Styles told <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thetagrope.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The Tag Rope&#8221; wrestling magazine<\/a> in a newly-released interview from before Styles joined WWE.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A lot of people wouldn\u2019t do that, there\u2019s a lot of chance you\u2019re taking when you do something like that but it\u2019s very liberating to feel like, \u2018Okay, I did that, and I did it all on my own, and I created a new A.J. Styles and separated myself from something that people only knew me as TNA A.J. Styles.&#8217; Now they knew me as Bullet Club A.J. Styles, which is hard to do and I was very happy that I was able to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Styles also learned a great deal from working\u00a0for New Japan, where he expanded on his knowledge base wrestling everyone from top stars Tanahashi and\u00a0Shinsuke Nakamura to underneath jokester Toru Yano.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWrestling Tanahashi, I really feel like that I learned just because I don\u2019t see what\u2019s going on, doesn\u2019t mean he doesn\u2019t. Sometimes, I don\u2019t feel the crowd or I don\u2019t see them so I can\u2019t see the reactions because I\u2019m in a hold or he\u2019s in a hold. But there was a time when I had him in a Calf Killer for what seemed like, \u2018Oh man, this is too long,&#8217; but he saw something I didn\u2019t, and literally we had people crying in the front row,&#8221; Styles said.<\/p>\n<p>Styles also commented on Shinsuke Nakamura, who is also scheduled to join Styles on the WWE roster after leaving New Japan.<\/p><div id=\"pwtor-3926324947\" class=\"pwtor-content pwtor-entity-placement\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280 __336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_test_300x250\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p>\u201cFirst of all, Shinsuke\u2019s awesome. He\u2019s his own wrestler, there\u2019s nobody like him, he\u2019s very unorthodox but he\u2019s his own man. You won\u2019t see another wrestler and go, \u2018Shinsuke copied him,&#8217; that\u2019s not it. If anything, you could say he does a little Michael Jackson stuff, which makes him so different from everybody else, he\u2019s flamboyant; this guy has all the tricks of the trade. At the same time, he will kick your head off.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ccKowGpp4mk<\/p>\n<div class=\"pwtor-end-article-groups pwtor-entity-placement\" id=\"pwtor-1618870167\"><div id=\"pwtor-2981104075\"><div align=\"center\" data-freestar-ad=\"__336x280\" id=\"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\">\r\n  <script data-cfasync=\"false\" type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n    freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ placementName: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\", slotId: \"pwtorchcom_medrec_3\" });\r\n  <\/script>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\nTHANK YOU FOR VISITING<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>A.J. Styles says he is beginning his WWE run after feeling &#8220;liberated&#8221; by developing his own persona outside of any promotion. Styles left TNA at the end of 2013 and began a new free agent <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/2016\/02\/09\/10392\/\" title=\"A.J. Styles says being &#8220;liberated&#8221; as free agent prepared him for WWE, talks New Japan run, Tanahashi &#038; Nakamura, more\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4,3],"tags":[90,87,404,71],"class_list":["post-10392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news_japan","category-news_tna","category-news_wwe","tag-aj-styles","tag-new-japan","tag-njpw","tag-wwe"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/post\/2016\/01\/StylesRumble_3x2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10392"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10393,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10392\/revisions\/10393"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pwtorch.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}