AJ Styles retired from in-ring competition, after his loss to Gunther at the Royal Rumble back on January 31. WWE held a tribute to Styles during the February 23rd WWE Raw in Atlanta, Georgia. Towards the end of the segment, The Undertaker came out to annouce Styles as the newest inductee into the WWE Hall of Fame.
Speaking on The Phenomenally Retro Podcast, AJ Styles said he plans to keep his WWE Hall Of Fame speech “short and sweet,” when he takes the stage. He said,
“I’m gonna try not to piss everybody off who has come there to see all the other inductions. There’s some guys that we’ve watched in the past, and you’re going, ‘Holy cow.’ Everybody’s thinking the same thing, like, ‘Alright man, that was good, that was great.’”
“So I’m gonna try to make sure that I stay within the guidelines of that and not make people hate AJ Styles based on his Hall of Fame induction speech.”
“So short and sweet, I think, is the best way to do it. I don’t know exactly how it’s gonna be or what I’m gonna say, but I know I’ve got a lot of people that I need to thank. I’m gonna try to do that and tell the fans how much I appreciate them for getting me this far because, listen, I look at me in the mirror and I know I never should have made it. So the fact that I did, that’s a testament to the kind of fans that are out there.”
The 2026 class of the WWE Hall of Fame will be inducted on Friday, 17, at Dolby Live at the MGM in Las Vegas, Nevada.
