During his recent Twitch stream, AJ Styles commented on the rumors that he was in talks with AEW last year:
“Yeah, there were talks. Look, it’s a business. My contract in WWE was going to expire and there were talks happening. The Bucks are my buddies. We never discussed money or anything, but there were talks about coming in. Again, it’s all business.”
While appearing on the Good Brothers’ podcast, Matt Jackson talked about how Styles was pitched to appear on the first episode of AEW Dynamite:
“When we’re pitching ideas to have you guys [Anderson and Gallows] come in, it was not going to be just the two of you [debuting on AEW]. There was going to be another person who I would not name. Let us just say he’s another Bullet Club member you may not want to talk about. We were originally going to debut AEW Dynamite at Madison Square Garden. At the end of our match, the three of you [Anderson, Gallows, and Styles] were supposed to jump the guardrail, and we were going to have a Bullet Club reunion. Obviously, things didn’t work out like that.”