AJ Styles was synonymous with TNA/Impact Wrestling for more than a decade. But once his last contract expired and the best the front office could offer him was (roughly) 60 percent of his last deal, “The Phenomenal One” made the decision to look elsewhere. Things wound up working out for him — he ran with the Bullet Club in New Japan and Ring of Honor, held the IWPG Heavyweight Championship twice, moved to WWE in 2016, held the WWE Championship for a combined 511 days and became one of the companies biggest stars — but at least two people are actively trying to get him back to Impact.
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Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows confirmed in a new interview with Sportskeeda this week that they’re doing whatever they can to convince Styles to return to his old stomping grounds once his contract expires.
“He [Styles] called when he knew that it was actually confirmed but, you know, he’s busy doing his schedule in WWE and we were busier than we’ve ever been,” Gallows said. “Putting together all the stuff we’re working on so he called and said he was happy once it was done but I don’t think we ever actually went to AJ for advice on whether we should do it or not.
Anderson added, “Ultimately, we’re going to talk AJ Styles into coming back to Impact. That’s what we’re doing every single day. We’re texting him and telling him to come back.”
The trio were known as The OC and The Club while in WWE, but they originally started running together as members of Bullet Club in New Japan. In a separate interview with ComicBook, the pair talked about where they feel the group ranks on the all-time list of wrestling factions.
“I think it’s got to rank pretty damn high, right? Yeah, you go ahead,” Gallows said. “But here we are seven years later, it’s still rocking and it’s going to continue. I don’t know a lot of factions in the history of wrestling factions that can say that.”
“I think that a lot of people think that something doesn’t get its validation unless it’s in WWE, right?” Anderson said. “There’s of course D-Generation X and nWo, and The Four Horsemen and Evolution, that’s all the biggest you’re going to see, because the WWE created that and helped it get to where it is. And if Bullet Club would have, if they would have bought the Bullet Club name and brought the Bullet Club in, it would easily have been number one up there. You can’t say it wouldn’t. But to be as big as it got outside of the WWE, and never touched foot in the WWE, makes it even cooler, I think. And that’s why I rank it a hundred percent number one, when it’s at its absolute full force. It was and is a true rebel faction that functions outside of those television walls, and got as big as it did, and continues to have momentum.”
