New WWE Hall of Fame inductee AJ Styles has suggested a way to make the Hall of Fame more special: hold the ceremony every other year.

Ahead of his Hall of Fame induction, Styles spoke on his “Phenomenally Retro” podcast about WWE potentially having fewer people to induct into the Hall of Fame, leading him to propose changing the format slightly.

“Can I say one thing that the internet may blow up about? I don’t know if it’s getting harder but I assume it is to put so many people in the Hall of Fame. And I know it sometimes is about money, but you got to think SmackDown is on Friday, then the Hall of Fame is right after that. It’s very  difficult for, especially the SmackDown folks, to get to the Hall of Fame, ’cause you got to shower up, get your nice clothes on, your suit, you know, red carpet, all that stuff,” he said. “I really believe that we could probably do the Hall of Fame every other year. Or maybe, you know, put some years in between and make it more special. I think it’s going to be really difficult to do this every year. Just a suggestion. I don’t know if it’s about money. Sometimes you know [it could be about money]; there’s a reason why WrestleMania is for two nights.”

Styles stated that Hall of Fame speeches sometimes go longer than originally intended, which he understands as the inductees want to touch on all the important things in their careers. 

The Hall of Fame ceremony was first held in 1994 and took place three times in the ’90s before being reintroduced in 2004. It has been an annual fixture ever since, with the only exception being 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s ceremony included the induction of Stephanie McMahon, Demolition, Sid Vicious, Bad News Brown, and Dennis Rodman, in addition to Styles.

On the road to his eventual retirement earlier this year, AJ Styles finally got to have one more match with Shinsuke Nakamura at WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event on January 24. The match came nearly eight years after the two men feuded over the WWE Championship in 2018, which was a feud that had a lot of excitement surrounding it but ultimately fell short in a wave of low blows. Styles was asked about his most recent match with Nakamura during a recent episode of “The Phenomenally Retro Podcast” and despite their WWE WrestleMania 34 match having some supporters, what the two men did this year was what they wanted to do in 2018.

“He was not happy about how everything went across you know?” Styles said. “To this day, he was like ‘No nut shots, we’re not doing anything.’ I get it man, the match we should have had was the match that we had at Saturday Night’s Main Event at that time. We were trying to be different and trying to go above expectations, but the expectations for that match to be great were so high. So high, just–it would have been difficult to meet those expectations, and it was. Then you know, we got to have our match that we wanted at Saturday Night’s Main Event and I thought that was an unbelievable match, I thought it was awesome, I loved it, I loved that match.”

The expectations for the match came from their now iconic bout in New Japan Pro Wrestling at NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 10 in 2016. The two men fought over the IWGP Intercontinental Championship in what is widely considered to be one of the best matches of the modern era, with the bout having extra weight as they would both leave for WWE just a few weeks later.

Please credit “Phenomenally Retro Podcast” when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.