AJ Styles may still look sharp inside the ring, but his body is paying a brutal price after decades in professional wrestling.
While speaking on The Phenomenally Retro Podcast, Styles discussed Kenny Omega facing Will Ospreay at Wembley Stadium and why veteran wrestlers need to take major opportunities whenever their bodies are actually cooperating.
The co-host suggested AEW may be booking Omega vs. Ospreay now because Omega has admitted there are more miles behind him than ahead of him. Styles understood that logic because wrestlers can feel healthy one night and wake up hurting the next morning.
“I totally get that, dude. When you’re feeling somewhat good, you want to be able to use it at the biggest possible place that you can. I get that.”
Styles said people who have never spent years taking bumps cannot fully understand how unpredictable the pain becomes. He can go to sleep feeling fine and wake up with his neck hurting despite doing nothing beyond lying in bed.
“A lot of people don’t understand it, but you will when you get old. I can go to bed feeling great, wake up with my neck hurting, and I didn’t do anything. I just went to bed.”
The former WWE Champion then described wrestling years as dog years because the damage builds up much faster than ordinary aging.
“I don’t think a lot of people understand the mileage that we put on our bodies. They’ll say, ‘I feel pretty good, and you’re still young.’ No, you don’t understand. Wrestling years are like dog years. We’ve sped up that much as far as the damage that we put on our bodies.”
Styles said older wrestlers become good at hiding how badly they hurt because they are not looking for sympathy. Fans see the performance, but they rarely see everything happening once the show is over.
“We hide it very well. All of us who are a little bit older, we hide it well because we don’t need sympathy. We don’t need that. But there’s a lot going on that we don’t tell people about because we have put this beating on our bodies. Everybody has.”
Styles knew the pain would eventually catch up with him when he entered the business. He accepted that there would come a time when getting out of bed became a struggle.
“Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t change it for the world. I knew what I was getting into. I knew that there was going to be a time where I was going to be struggling to get out of bed some days, and that’s okay. I’m all right with it.”
He still plans to train and use recovery methods such as cold plunges and sauna sessions, but none of that changes the fact that pain has become part of his everyday life. Styles ended the discussion with a blunt admission about what his body now feels like after spending most of his adult life wrestling.
“I’ll do things to help me. I’ll get my cold plunge. I’ll get in my sauna. I’m still going to continue to work out. Nothing’s going to change. As old as I get, I’m still going to do these things.”
“Again, I wouldn’t change anything. Hurting every day isn’t a problem.”
Styles has no regrets about the career he chose, but his comments make it clear that the punishment does not stop when the match ends. The pain follows wrestlers home, into bed and right back out of it the next morning.
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