Giving this match more consideration than I should so as not to make a mistake and blindly vote AJ - I far prefer him, he's worlds better and on the surface has had a better career.
This Mr TNA tag for Styles makes him sound more important than he is to be honest. Undoubtedly he was the #1 face vs Jarrett in the early stages of the company, but he dropped his three World Titles at the time to Rhino, Raven and Truth. Hardly a stellar worldtitle roster. After those 190 days with the title? It took him over 4 years to win it again, for his fourth and final title reign. Now THIS was a significant title reign - beating Kurt Angle for it and holding it for 211 days. He retained against Sting, breaking his undefeated BFG stretch. He retained in triple threats, vs the far larger Tomko, as well as beating Angle multiple more times and going over established main event talent like Joe.
My point is - that's it. That one year Styles WAS Mr TNA. In terms of being on top of the roster, the guy that everyone is shooting for.. that's it. I mean, the 2004 TNA roster is comparable to WWECW imo, which I treat as a midcard title. This "Mr TNA" nickname has come from the embodiment of everything the company strives to be - high flying, innovative, extreme, total non-stop action. He fits like a glove, he has absolutely single handedly promoted the X Division to a point that it almost feels as big as the world title. But for the purposes of a tournament like this? He's an infrequent main eventer and mostly a midcarder.
You know what though? FUCK Shane Douglas. He's an absolute joke, an overachiever for reasons I simply cannot understand, a promotion jumper that can't sit still enough to justify a single push, let alone four world titles. The fact remains, he's been in the main event with tons more presence than AJ Styles ever has. And early ECW>early TNA.
Also Douglas and a group like Triple Threat for example are just the type of heel entity that AJ lives to come out victorious over. If this match really happened, it would have been Douglas sauntering into AJ's territory, being shady and trying to get one over on Styles, all to set up the big triumphant moment for AJ to thrive. This is AJ's matchup hands down.
I'm absolutely desperate to put AJ over Douglas here, so I'm turning to this. is there any justification for this? I mean, I can imagine it happening but I havn't religiously followed TNA recently so maybe i've missed a case of exactly this. Any history of AJ overcoming stables to beat heels in feel good moments? I've tried looking it up but the vast majority of his title wins have been in multi-way matches and I can't find any evidence that he is the babyface to go over the dastardly, supported heel here.
I'm not going to vote and re-evaluate in a bit cos I really, really hate Shane Douglas and love AJ Styles. Just can't justify it at all at the moment.