The Royal Rumble is a definite tournament for many WWE fans. It is no longer just the muse of “The Boulevard to WrestleMania,” but or no longer it is miles the set wrestlers who gain been lacking in motion invent their return, admire we saw final year with Edge. It is additionally the set other abilities invent their debuts.
The arrival of AJ Styles in 2016 must be indubitably some of the supreme debuts in the ancient past of the firm. The man fans by no map notion would expose up in the WWE—no longer to mention in his leisurely 30s, after stints with TNA and NJPW—at final did, and he ended up altering the entire lot for the promotion.
Now, the buildup to the 2021 Royal Rumble begins this Sunday with WWE’s unusual documentary, Untold: AJ Styles Royal Rumble Debut, which provides unhurried-the-scenes stories and a fleet ancient past of Styles’ in-ring profession. What you come away with after looking out at it is miles a larger sense who the man born Allen Jones is as a person, how that has fashioned his profession and what AJ Styles map to many wrestlers all around the set the realm.
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The half-hour documentary begins with the producer asking Styles an easy request: “Who is the Phenomenal One?” Styles chuckles as he tries to come abet up with an resolution to what he calls the “most sophisticated request” he’s ever been requested.
It is sophisticated for Styles resulting from it took a long time, and tons twists and turns, to settle out who he changed into as a person and as a performer.
In the doc, we be taught how Styles’ admire of wrestling developed when the Georgia native watched Georgia Championship Wrestling on my own as a shrimp one, and how his sophisticated relationship with his father molded him to alter into an athlete, competitor and the family man (he’s a husband, and father of three kids) that he’s this day.
That level of intimacy makes for a blinding compelling seek, and in his speaking-head segments Styles is gentle and comes off as staunch. However he additionally clearly is conscious of exactly what he desires to chat about and how to articulate it—it feels as although he’s been ready to say his private myth for a extremely very prolonged time and he’s ready, now that he has the platform.
Once the foundational stuff about Styles’ private life is established, the documentary specializes in his wrestling creep, from the final days of WCW to a minor characteristic in the WWE wrestling-in-darkish fits on WWE Steel (be conscious that?), to him being equipped a developmental form out WWE, which is when Styles made the first truly huge decision of his profession. The deal required Styles to switch to Cincinnati, but he turned the provide down resulting from he felt he could maybe maybe now not uproot his family.
“My wife’s dream got right here first, with her desirous to be a trainer, and I didn’t must mess that up,” Styles says in the documentary. “Lo and value, I own it changed into the acceptable decision I ever made.”
Turning down of mission to work in the supreme wrestling firm on this planet changed into an good threat—and beneath no cases Styles’ final—but it changed into a favor that peril him on a path to greatness.
From that time in the doc, Styles runs through his time working the indies sooner than he landed in the newly fashioned TNA. Styles made TNA his skilled home for 11 years, elevating the promotion and becoming a household title to wrestling fans. One in every of the boys who worked alongside Styles in TNA, Samoa Joe, is additionally featured in the doc, and he’s there to say the viewers about Allen Jones, the man unhurried AJ Styles. Joe additionally hammers home how Jones’ tenacity helped him change into, as Styles, the acceptable wrestler on this planet.
Finn Balor additionally chimes in, and adds a viewpoint about wrestling in Japan that many fans create no longer truly perceive—particularly, how inspiring it is miles to be a Westerner and garner the distinction of the NJPW crowd admire Styles did.
Without a doubt, or no longer it is these connections to Joe and Balor that helped Styles accumulate to the doors of WWE once again, after 17 years in the ring. The documentary builds to the 2016 Royal Rumble and AJ’s debut with WWE, and or no longer it is involving to listen to Styles discuss meeting with the WWE and agreeing to stamp, and then hear him additionally relive the 2d that he debuted and the Royal Rumble match that ensued. Styles’ debut in the WWE will doubtless be a 2d that is talked about for years and years—and that is now not any longer recency bias coloring our viewpoint.
This documentary is perchance no longer exactly what fans request. In case it is likely you’ll maybe maybe maybe presumably also be coming for a deep-dive into Styles’ wrestling ancient past or a retrospective on his WWE profession, this is rarely that. This particular is ready the events that led up to Styles’ Royal Rumble debut, fit snugly into a 30-minute program. Pondering those parameters, the WWE delivers, because it often does.
The entire lot of Styles’ wrestling legacy is perchance no longer completely understood until he at final hangs it all up, but this unusual documentary succeeds in spotlighting what he’s performed in the profession thus far. Confidently, there may be more to come abet, resulting from there may be positively hundreds of self-discipline matter to detect by design of “The Phenomenal One.”
WWE Untold: AJ Styles Royal Rumble Debut will doubtless be available on ask Sunday, January 17, at 10 a.m. ET on the WWE Network.
