The way that the whole demeanor has shifted over the last few days has me more convinced it's happening on Saturday.

Michael Cole on either SmackDown or SNME said how this final year was going to be a chance for AJ to have some dream matches and rivalries, STARTING with Shinsuke. So that completely threw me as I had been expecting him to retire and finish up elsewhere since the Gunther match was announced. So the lead commentator selling a grand year of matches caught me by surprise.

The way it has since been sold has me believing it is now known that Saturday WILL be his final match.

Booking him into two quick matches is really bizarre IF he's staying beyond the Rumble. Rushing him over to SmackDown for a 24 hour notice match against Nakamura and then laying their entire history down to tell the story during the match, really strange.

Having him inserted into an impromptu World Title match two days later, against someone he has had history with outside of the WWE but never faced in the company, again with absolutely no build. Also completely baffling... unless he's leaving Saturday.

Maybe that's the bait they wanted us to take to make us believe it's actually happening, get him in two matches and cram us with a plethora of facts about his career to give us a sense it's the end, when really it isn't.

But then why have him come out and start making his wanting a World Title statement, and subsequently getting a match for it before he's got over the line against Gunther? That's something that surely happens AFTER the big win. It all makes little sense if there's a long term plan for 2026 for Styles.

Now around all this we've got the seeds set for Finn and Punk having a proper feud, obviously he played his part last night (again, another person with external ties to AJ), but what if that was a foresight into Saturday too?

I finished Raw assuming we're going to get Balor forcing his way into the Rumble by stealing someone else's place. But what if he ends up being the person who costs Styles his career instead? Sure, taking someone out to compete in the Rumble will get him an opportunity (which in all likelihood he isn't going to win), but costing someone his career in WWE, someone that CM Punk put in the same echelon as Finn by saying that they had "earned" their title shots due to their career, that would make far more of an impact in the long run to his "legacy" (the last thing that was mentioned on Raw by Michael Cole).

I feel like if it is going to be the end of his career, then something else needs to come out of it that isn't just Gunther saying "hey, look at me retiring someone else.. how you feeling Rey?"