Former WWE Tag Team Champions were banned from saying a certain phrase in feud with John Cena

Former WWE Superstars Karl Anderson and Doc Gallows recently stated how they were creatively stifled during their 2016 feud with John Cena.

After arriving from New Japan Pro Wrestling in 2016, the tag team reunited with their Bullet Club teammate AJ Styles to take on WWE's biggest star in John Cena. During the feud, the duo coined the phrase 'beat up John Cena' after The Club assaulted the 16 time world champion on RAW.

Speaking on the podcast TalkNShop, Karl Anderson stated how the phrase got over with fans in both Japan and the United States.

"We came back from Japan that one time, we did the greatest promo of all time for The Club. We were so hungover because we just came back from Japan. We almost fell off the stage when we went to commercial. John Cena was in the ring. We did the whole 'beat up John Cena' for the first time ever. Got a massive [pop], a big reaction on social media as well," H/T Fightful

Luke Gallows went on to add that a WWE higher up, possibly Vince McMahon himself, told AJ Styles that they were no longer able to say the phrase that earned the team so much popularity.

"I don't know how long we said it or if it was just that week. It got hot, I immediately went home and printed 'Beat Up John Cena' shirts and brought them to the house show loop. We were going to sneak them onto Raw, but Vince called AJ and told him...somebody called AJ, I feel like it was Vince, and told him we were never allowed to say 'Beat up John Cena' again." H/T Fightful

Despite the creative difficulties that Anderson and Gallows seem to have faced, the feud between the 16-time world champion and The Club has been one of the best WWE rivalries in recent years.

AJ Styles on his creative relationship with John Cena

John Cena and AJ Styles faced off for the the first time in 2016. However, the creative collaboration between the two was executed perfectly on screen.

During a stream on his Twitch channel in 2020, AJ spoke of the efforts the Cenation Leader put into creating a compelling storyline between the two of them.

"He went on to say, ‘Well, I tried digging up some stuff on you and I couldn’t really find anything’, so that’s when he ended up coming up with the stuff about, ‘Well, if you don’t like it then you’ll just end up leaving to go somewhere else’. But I thought it was really cool that he takes some real stuff and throws it in the mix of entertainment, and you ended up with a matchup like Styles and Cena. I enjoyed working with him." H/T Wrestling Inc

In a match that fans never thought they would see, the four one-on-one contests between Styles and Cena have gone down as all-time WWE classics.