John Cena Recalls Struggling To Come Up With A Reason He And AJ Styles Were Feuding ‘Because He’s Such A Nice Person’

John Cena recalls looking for a ‘why?’ at the beginning of his feud with AJ Styles.

Cena and Styles’ feud began in 2016 halfway through the year, leading to a string of bouts together including a landmark match at SummerSlam that year. Now, Cena has looked back on the beginning of the feud.

While speaking on SI’s The Takedown in a new interview, John Cena reflected on the beginning of his storyline with AJ Styles, noting that he initially struggled to come up with a ‘why’ with regard to a reason for he and Styles to be feuding.

“When we had our first issue together, our first program. Normally I can go find a ‘why?’. Why are we fighting? Because I think that’s the attraction. I couldn’t find anything for AJ.Honestly, I thought that maybe in all of our years in separate promotions, with him being the lead dog in TNA, did he ever say anything or even hint at a notion that I could, in the heat of the moment, bring up and make people say ‘I wanna see this!’. No, not at all. Because he’s such a nice person.”

Cena continued, noting that AJ helped him come up with one eventually.

“So I had to sit him down, and it was the day of our first promo, and I’m like ‘hey, we got to understand why we’re fighting. And honestly, this is how decent a human being he is, after two-and-a-half hours of prodding, he finally was like, ‘OK, listen, now this isn’t Allen, but maybe AJ might say that if it weren’t for John Cena, I would be the face of WWE’ and I was like, ‘bingo!’ and we’re off to the races.”

Elsewhere in the same interview, Cena spoke about what he feels will come next for AJ Styles. You can read more about that here.