AJ Styles arrived at WrestleMania 38 with his right cheek bleeding after “The Phenomenal One” accidentally ran into the edge of the entrance stage and cut the side of his face. Pat McAfee, who had a match later that night, noted on The Pat McAfee Show this week that WWE producers started taking precautions after that incident happened. Apparently, multiple producers walked up to the former NFL punter to make sure he wouldn’t make the same mistake.ย
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“I was walking to gorilla which is obviously the last stop before you go out, and four different producers were like, ‘when you go out there, the bottom of the entrance is like a star, make sure you get to the middle because it is sharp on the side there,’” McAfee said (h/t Wrestling Inc.). “I was like ‘okay, yeah.’ They’re like ‘well, AJ literally just ran his face into the side of it. He’s bleeding right now.’ I was like ‘what?’ I was like ‘AJ Styles is bleeding right now?’ ‘Match hasn’t started and he’s bleeding, so we need you not to do that too. Okay, thank you so much.’ And I was like ‘you got it.’
“Then the next producer came ‘hey, when you go out there, there’s a slant. Make sure you get all the way to the middle.’ I’m like, ‘oh yeah, why’s that?’ Like, now I’m gassing. ‘Well AJ Styles just ran his face into it, so we need that not to happen.’ ‘Okay, thank you so much. You saved my life.’ So then I’m walking four more steps, another producer ‘hey, on your entrance, I don’t know if you’ve heard or not.’ ‘Yep, got it. Face thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah,’” he added.ย
McAfee wound up winning his scheduled match against Austin Theory, but then lost an impromptu match against Vince McMahon (thanks to heavy interference from Theory). Steve Austin then walked out, nailed both Theory and McMahon with a Stunner, then celebrated with Mcafee before hitting him with a Stunner as well. Meanwhile, Styles was on the losing end of his match with Edge thanks to some outside interference from Damian Priest. “The Phenomenal One” then tried to get revenge the following night on Raw but was beaten down due to being outnumbered.ย