AJ Styles on his Turning Point in TNA

According to AJ Styles who was on The E&C Podcast says his turning point with TNA came when the company ran into financial issues due to poor management.
“I take a lot of pride in what I do in the ring, but at the end of the day, if I’m not supporting my family, then why am I here? And so, it came down to a money issue and they were having problems, but that isn’t my problem.

I contributed the best I can and did everything I could to help make TNA a good company that people would want to work for and they abused their money terribly.
They just didn’t know how to manage their money and so they basically, after I won the championship, and we knew, we were in negotiations, and we just extended my contract till December.

My contract was up in August. We extended it till December.” Styles recalled, “I mean, my contract was up, but I was done negotiating. Yeah, it was a scary thing because this was the job I had for 11 years. And I just felt like it was the right call. I wasn’t sure where it was going to lead, but it was the whole principle of the thing, that you can’t just treat somebody like that and think that they’re going to stand by your side. And despite the money that they may or may not have come up with, it was just, ‘you know what? I’ve got to move on.’ It was scary.”

Although Styles put out feelers to see if #WWE was interested in signing him, nothing came of it at the time.

“I was in the TNA bubble for so long that I didn’t realize what was out there.” Styles remembered, “I did reach out to WWE to let them know I wasn’t under contract with TNA anymore. I never really heard anything back. It’s just one of those things, ‘okay, we’ll keep rolling, keep doing what I’m doing.'”

Source: The Spotlight 2.0