An AJ Styles/Drew McIntyre WrestleMania match could spawn a TNA faction

WWE needs to let Edge challenge Roman Reigns for the Universal Title and have AJ Styles be the one to face Drew McIntyre for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 37.

Styles is in the Elimination Chamber match along with four other former WWE Champions in pursuit of McIntyre’s title. McIntyre will probably win that match and go on to WrestleMania with the WWE Title, so how do we get to Styles vs. McIntyre?

A lot of people may not know this, but Styles and McIntyre have a lot in common when it comes to their professional wrestling careers.

There’s plenty of parallels for WWE to draw on with Drew McIntyre and AJ Styles.

When WCW shut down in 2001, WWE decided not to offer Styles a contract, forcing him to trek through the indy scene, primarily Ring of Honor, to become a  star. He would find a home in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling — now known as Impact Wrestling — where he would become known as “Mr. TNA” because he won every male title in the company and put on great matches with everyone he wrestled in his roughly dozen years with the company.

When it comes to McIntyre, his initial eight-year run with WWE came and went without getting a shot at a big championship despite being labeled “The Chosen One”. Like Styles, Drew needed to get away from the big wrestling machine to find himself, and like Styles, McIntyre became a star on the indy scene before finding a home in Impact, where he would also become a world champion.

WWE should use TNA/Impact Wrestling as the defining plot point for a Styles/McIntyre feud. The promotion should begin planting the seeds now with Styles telling McIntyre that McIntyre always wanted to be like him. They should also add Bobby Roode, Bobby Lashley, Samoa Joe, and Jeff Jarrett to the storyline to help mess with McIntyre’s head.

McIntyre has enjoyed a good title run, but now is the time to make Styles the WWE Champion and to re-establish him as the top heel on Raw. The WWE could have him talk about how he made TNA Wrestling known to the world and how he made SmackDown popular again when he signed with the company.

Now, he plans to make Raw the “A Show” again and hopes to do it in the most impactful way. AJ could start a heel stable with Roode, Lashley, Joe, and, as the group’s manager, Jarrett. With multiple former Impact World Champions on their roster, WWE should be using that as an advantage to them. A heel stable of former Impact stars would be a perfect storyline for WWE because it would allow for some fresh ideas and for wrestlers who should be stars, like Roode, to shine on the main roster.

Impact Wrestling has been around for 19 years and has put together some of professional wrestling’s greatest feuds and matches. But in the media’s eyes, they were never going to be true competition for WWE. While WWE may never admit it, Impact failing to do right with their homegrown talent was one of the best things to happen to WWE because it allowed them to pick up the talent from Impact and place them on NXT so that the black and gold brand could have familiar faces for fans to subscribe to the WWE Network to see.

Jarrett would be the voice of the group since he was the one who started TNA/Impact with his dad, Jerry, in 2002. Obviously, this would require Jarrett to go full heel and call out Triple H and Vince McMahon for taking his homegrown stars like Styles, Joe, and Roode and not giving them the keys to the WWE kingdom.

He would put Styles over since Styles has already won the title while noting that he should have won the world title more than twice (and won it sooner than he initially did). Jarrett would then brag about how guys like Lashley, McIntyre, Christian, and Jeff Hardy, among others, came to TNA to work for him when WWE didn’t believe in them anymore and became world champions. He would then explain how Roode and Joe have been underutilized in WWE and how they should have had multiple reigns as world champion. McIntyre would then tell Jarrett how he was always going to be WWE Champion, it was just a matter of when.

A heel Impact Wrestling stable led by Styles against McIntyre is a storyline I would love to see come true in the WWE because it would allow the fans unaware that outside of WWE, there was another company putting world titles on wrestlers who had never been given a chance to shine in the company.