Vince McMahon Absence Brings Big WWE Changes Pleads Top Star
AJ Styles has pleaded with wrestling stars everywhere to give WWE a chance and says the company is no longer the same now Vince McMahon has gone.
Nothing lasts forever and that is perhaps nowhere truer than in the wrestling business. Over the years, fans and talents alike came to expect mass releases from WWE as the company frequently cleared its roster out in brutal fashion.
These releases came into sharp focus in 2020 as multiple roster clearouts took place over the next two years as the pandemic hit live event business. In September 2023, just a few days after Endeavor completed its takeover of WWE, was the last – at the time of writing – mass release in the company with the likes of Mustafa Ali, Dolph Ziggler, and Matt Riddle among many others leaving WWE.
But now Vince McMahon is gone from WWE having been forced to resign from his role as TKO Executive Chairman and AJ Styles thinks that will make a huge difference for talent as far as their job security goes.
Speaking on the Battleground podcast, AJ Styles explained that he wants wrestlers not in the company to understand WWE is a different beast without Vince McMahon running the show:
I wish more guys who I think would do well in WWE who may have been afraid as far as past things that have happened with Vince being there, I wish that they would understand that WWE is in this for the long run. We’re talking about 10 years on Netflix, possibly 20 years. That’s a long time. We’re not going anywhere.
The fact that you could come here and you can have a job as long as you can produce, for as long as you want, and depending on where you’re from you could reach out to other countries. I wish more guys would understand this. We are not just in the United States of America. We’re not just in England. We are global. We’re even bigger now than we’ve ever been. Places that we weren’t able to go, now we’re in. I just wish they could see that and know that this isn’t the same WWE that Vince was in charge of.
AJ Styles Believes Triple H Has Made Positive Change In WWE
Styles continued noting he feels things have improved massively under Triple H and says he doesn’t want to see people be released from their dream job when they maybe just need a different direction:
I really believe that Triple H looks at our talent and goes, ‘Let’s get them better or let’s find ways to bring out the best in them rather than show them the worst.’ A lot of those guys and girls, when they get released from WWE, it crushes them. I never understood why we want to do something like that rather than just like, hey, let’s send them back to NXT. They just need a little bit more work or something like that, but being released, it’ll crush you.
I don’t want to see people’s lives ruined because of a job. At the end of the day, it’s just a job, but still, it’s something they’ve worked for their whole life and then when you’re told you’re not good enough, man, it sucks. It’s not the way it is these days. Now with Triple H in charge, I think he’s doing a great job of making everyone feel important.