Why A.J. Styles Is My Wrestler Of The Year

A.J. Styles began 2014 in a familiar place - inside a TNA Wrestling ring. Frankly, it's a place he'd become far too familiar with.




Styles' last match for TNA aired on January 9, 2014. It had actually occurred weeks earlier. Thus, at the beginning of the year, he was a man without a company.

Styles had spent more than a decade building a hidden legacy. He had toiled in relative obscurity compared to some of his more celebrated contemporaries. Fairly or unfairly, he became linked with TNA's history of disappointment. His career, while often spectacular in the ring, had been wasted in many ways.

Styles burned his best years working for a company that failed to grow or expand in any meaningful way. After he walked away from TNA, World Wrestling Entertainment was apparently not interested in bringing him in. Styles was too old. He wasn't a good enough promo. His best years were behind him.

That's what a lot of people thought.

They thought wrong.

Perhaps with a massive chip on his shoulder, A.J. Styles transformed himself into one of the hottest acts in wrestling today. He did it in the classic way - by himself. He became the ultimate free agent.

Just weeks after he cut ties with TNA, Styles was back working for Ring Of Honor, where he'd made a name for himself a decade earlier. Matches against Jay Lethal, Adam Cole and many others would follow. Styles would appear for other alternative wrestling organizations across the U.S. He was having great matches with fresh opponents, but the best was yet to come.

In April 2014, Styles made his debut for New Japan Pro Wrestling and joined the dastardly Bullet Club. In an instant, two entities already revered by a sizable segment of the wrestling fan base were elevated to a new level of interest in the U.S. American wrestling fans, many disillusioned with the current WWE product, searched the internet to follow Styles antics overseas. And those Bullet Club t-shirts...Oh! Those shirts! They started to appear everywhere - The hottest wrestling apparel since the days of "Austin 3:16" and the "New World Order".

A month after making his first appearance in NJPW, Styles won its top title, the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. The man who had been used up by TNA and was unwanted by WWE at the beginning of 2014 was on top of the professional wrestling world less than six months later.


AJ Styles vs Kazuchika Okada - NJPW Wrestling... by Prowrestling00

The year was not without controversy. The Styles Clash, an innocent-looking finishing move, suddenly became frighteningly dangerous. No less than three separate opponents were badly injured taking the move. Two suffered broken necks. The debate over who was at fault and whether the move should be retired raged for much of the year. Styles was steadfast in defending his use of the move. His show of real-world defiance and swagger only made him more compelling.

Last September, I traveled from Pittsburgh to Wheeling, West Virginia for a Ring Of Honor television taping. There were a lot of performers I was excited to see, but make no mistake about it. I wanted to see A.J. Styles and the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in-person. I got to see him have a match with Matt Sydal and it was fantastic. Styles had presence. He had mystique. He was nothing like the guy I remembered from TNA. Finally, A.J. Styles was larger than life.

A.J. Styles is my Wrestler Of Year for 2014 because the professional wrestling industry revolves around him, and because he now controls his place in it. Before CM Punk or (the man formerly known as) Alberto Del Rio left WWE, Styles blazed the trail. He is no longer just an extremely talented cog in someone else's wheel. He seized control of his own destiny and earned a place in wrestling more prestigious than anyone was willing to give him just one year earlier.