With clashing fighting styles, no one ever thought that AJ Styles and John Cena’s matches from 2016 – 2017 would be the match of the year contenders.

However, they were. Though those matches were so long ago, Styles admits that his rivalry with Cena was a game-changer to his career overall in WWE.

During his interview on The Bump, the panel and Styles took a stroll down memory lane, by revisiting his matches with Cena from SummerSlam (2016) to the Royal Rumble (2017). Styles couldn’t help but discuss their overall chemistry and how well they meshed together.

“I was super excited about it. I knew it was going to be something special, no doubt about it,” Styles exclaimed! “Him and I had this chemistry and I’ve said this over and over again.

We are two totally different performers, but him and I gelled so well together. I knew that this was going to be a fun match. I was smiling the whole time because I knew this was going to be great.”

Styles continued on towards their Royal Rumble match from a year later.

“As I said, the chemistry that we had was unbelievable,” he reiterated.

“What you don’t know about that match at the Royal Rumble was that we never went outside of the ring; that’s different than most matches. There are a lot of matches that I’m proud of, and this is one of them.”

Speaking of bitter rivals, Styles and Samoa Joe have had quite a personal feud back in 2018 for the WWE Championship.

In fact, Joe made it his personal mission to tear Styles apart from the inside out, when he took it upon himself to bring Styles’ wife and children into their feud.

Looking back at their match from SummerSlam in 2018, Styles never thought he and Joe would cross paths again as they did many years ago in TNA.

“Where we came from to where we are now it’s pretty unbelievable the way our careers paralleled together,” he noted. “Who would have thought that we would be there in WWE at a pay-per-view years later. It’s unbelievable – it really is.”