AJ Styles has spent enough time around WWE’s developmental system to notice something he didn’t necessarily expect. When it comes to athletes walking into WWE from college and learning professional wrestling from scratch, he believes the women are picking it up faster than the men.
Speaking on The AJ Styles Show, Styles brought up Sol Ruca as an example while discussing genuinely homegrown WWE talent. From what he has seen, WWE may have an easier time producing those wrestlers on the women’s side. The weird part is that Styles sees the exact opposite once you leave WWE’s developmental system.
“I think you’re gonna find homegrown more on the women’s side than you are on the male side. I think that’s the way it is here. For whatever reason, the women that come from college pick it up faster than the guys. It’s weird. But then on the indies, it’s the opposite. The guys pick it up faster than the girls. I don’t know why that is.”
Styles has a pretty obvious bias when it comes to the independent scene, and he freely admitted it. He spent years working his way through the indies before becoming a major name, and he believes wrestlers who take that route arrive with something many college recruits simply don’t have yet. They already wanted to be professional wrestlers.
“I’m biased when it comes to the indies because that’s where I came from. But I think those guys, they wanted to be professional wrestlers. They watched professional wrestling. They know what it’s supposed to look like.”
Styles has another explanation about why some of WWE’s male college recruits take longer to adjust. Getting anywhere near the top of Division I athletics requires an enormous amount of confidence, and Styles believes that can come with an ego that doesn’t disappear just because somebody has switched sports.
“To be that good, to be a D1 athlete, to be the top of the line when it comes to athletics, and now it takes an ego, right? So that ego is still in their system by the time they get to WWE. We’ve got to find a way to get that out as quick as possible.”
Styles knows something about that adjustment himself. His own background included collegiate wrestling, and he admitted that even he initially carried a certain attitude toward the entertainment side of professional wrestling.
“Even I wrestled in college, and to a point I was like, ‘Man, I’m a wrestler. I don’t know about that freaking, you know, entertainment stuff.’ Even I had to figure that out. So I think that’s what slows the guys down in that process. I could be wrong.”
Styles isn’t saying WWE’s male college recruits can’t become stars. He’s saying the adjustment he once had to make himself is still showing up in the Performance Center today—and right now, he thinks women like Sol Ruca are getting through it faster.
What do you think about AJ Styles’ assessment of WWE’s developmental talent? Let us know in the comments.
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