Bully Ray agreed with Henry, citing the famous "Rocky" film franchise, which eventually saw its protagonist compete in less-than-competitive matches in the build up to fights with major villains like Clubber Lang or Ivan Drago. "[In 'Rocky 3'] when Rocky was beating everybody after he had beaten Apollo Creed, and those were no-name fighters, where you knew Rocky was gonna win," Bully explained, hedging that Styles very much has name value. Bully and Henry both agreed that they didn't think there was a chance at Styles upsetting Rhodes and ending his title reign so soon.

"You always have a defining babyface and a defining heel. Leading up into that match, there were a couple of incidences where they almost made AJ Styles come off as a pseudo-babyface," Henry explained, noting the promo Styles cut about "two Georgia boys" fired him up as a fellow Georgian. As someone who wrestled as a heel, Henry felt the respect between the two men kept the match from having the heat it could've had.

"I want to see people respect each other. Cody and AJ both...respected each other and as a heel, I never respected nobody," Henry concluded. While Henry and Bully were non-plussed with the match, WWE wasn't, as WWE CCO Paul "Triple H" Levesque recently thanked France for the warm introduction.