AJ Styles Reveals Why His WWE Championship Reign Ended In 2018

Current WWE Intercontinental Champion AJ Styles returned to his weekly Twitch stream to answer some more questions from his fans. When an individual asked Styles about what his first match was like, "The Phenomenal One" recalled how excited he was to have an audience for the first time.

"For me, I thought it was awesome," AJ said. "I mean, I was in a ring and it's not in front of a whole bunch of people but there were people out there. And for me, it was awesome because I was doing it in front of people. I bet that if I watched it now – we're talking about 21 years ago, it would be terrible. I am sure of it. But for young AJ, well, that first match was under a mask and they called me Mr. Olympia. But I was out there, and I was happy about that."

AJ also noted how he's proud to be the current IC Champion. However, he mentioned how traveling through airports while being in possession of your title belt can add for some unwanted issues.

"It's great to be the champ. It also sucks to carry that belt all the time with you because you have to take it out at security, and then the next thing you know everybody wants to see it and they want to try it on," Styles said. "I had this one guy, I think I may have been in England when I had a match as IWGP Champion, the New Japan Champion, and they literally unloaded everything in my bag because I had the belt in it.

"And then, when they realized what it was, this guy's like, 'Hey, can I take it out?' I'm like, 'No, you just made me wait thirty minutes to take everything out of my bag and look at the belt when you could have just looked at the belt.' So I'm like, 'Put that back in my bag!' I was mad, man."

Styles had a dominant 371 day reign as WWE champion that spanned from November 7, 2017 until November 13, 2018 when he lost the championship to Daniel Bryan on an episode of SmackDown. He revealed that higher ups in the company didn't think fans would be as interested in seeing a rematch between Styles / Lesnar as they would seeing a first-time match between Lesnar and Bryan.

"I think the reason why you saw that happen was because you already saw Brock Lesnar / AJ Styles and ? oh man, I'm just not going to go there ... Not you guys, I'm sure you guys would like to have seen the rematch of AJ Styles and Brock Lesnar but [WWE] didn't think anyone else would," AJ stated.