A.J. Styles

Styles once admitted in an interview that in his childhood, they were so poor that they couldn’t afford a television and Styles used to watch wrestling matches at his friend’s houses.

A.J. Styles was born Allen Neal Jones on June 2 1977, in North Carolina, USA. Born in poverty to an alcoholic father, Styles describes his childhood as ‘worse than hell’ and admits that initially he hated his father for many years due to his abusive behaviour.

Styles entered a wrestling school while in school, just out of fun, because his friends were trying their hands at that. He didn’t even like it initially but slowly, wrestling grew onto him and he started taking it more seriously.

Styles graduated from Johnson High School in Georgia, and attended a college in South Carolina, on a scholarship he received due to his wrestling prowess. At the initial stage of his career, while looking to sustain himself as a wrestler, Styles did odd jobs, such as driving and supplying water to houses, to make the ends meet.

At the 1998 National Championship wrestling in Georgia, Styles got his first big break, where he was trained by a legend Rick Michaels but lost his very first single match. However, in 1999, he emerged as the winner of Promotional Tour’s Television championship. Styles then went on to participate in several independent wrestling tournaments in the USA and outside.

In February 2002, Styles made his debut in Australian promotion of WWA and got his very first title in form of WWA International Cruiserweight Championship after defeating Jerry Lynn. Styles spent some time with East Coast Wrestling Association, Frontier Wrestling Alliance, World Championship Wrestling, and also happened to made two brief appearances in World Wrestling Federation (WWF).

Styles had a stint with TNA wrestling in mid 2002 and he ended up winning the inaugural TNA X Division Championship and soon got his hands on the Tag Team Championship as well. A few months later, he lost the X Division Championship to Low Ki and made several attempts to win it back, but failed. He somehow regained the title in October, only to lose it again weeks later.

Upon his debut in Ring of Honor, Styles quickly became the wrestler to play in the main events of the show and lost his very first title shot for the ROH World Championship, eventually becoming the number one contender for the same later. In 2003, he eyed the ROH Tag Team Championship and partnered with Amazing Red for the same and ended up taking the title from The Prophecies.

Styles became the ROH Pure Wrestling Champion after defeating a number of wrestlers in a one night event including CM Punk. However, the title became vacant once his contract with ROH terminated in 2004. Upon his return to ROH in 2005, he made several attempts at scoring the ROH World Championship title, but was unsuccessful.

As of June 2017, A.J. Styles’ net worth is USD 6 Million.