This is the next chapter of a year by year retrospective from my viewpoint as a wrestling fan. What did I watch, what was good, what was bad, which men and women were the best and what matches and moments stood out.
Man, did a lot change in this year. The floodgates opened to bring in a slew of new people, the brand split was revived, new titles were made, and the Shield/Horsewomen takeover of the main roster was complete. There was a lot to take in and it was truly a transformative year in the biggest company in wrestling. I went to some more shows and I began to learn about wrestling outside of WWE and what it was like in this century.
First, the arrivals. Fresh out of New Japan Pro Wrestling came Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows but more importantly Shinsuke Nakamura and this guy named AJ Styles. And from NXT Dusty Rhodes final class of prospects would come up to the main roster. That meant that Bayley, Alexa Bliss, Carmella, Nia Jax, Finn Balor, Sami Zayn, Baron Corbin, Enzo & Cas, Dana Brooke and Apollo Crews would be leaving behind the yellow brand to start plying their trade on the big shows. Whew, that was a lot! And that’s before we get to the returns of John Cena, Seth Rollins, Randy Orton, and Cesaro.
Then there was the brand split, which had been dormant since 2012, which returned coinciding with Smackdown moving from being a taped show on Friday nights to a live show on Tuesdays. Running Smackdown as a taped show with the same group of wrestlers pulling double duty was just not cutting it as a TV show, so in order to keep the train running they made the move to do it live with it’s own roster once again. New titles would be created and it would be 2002 all over again, at least for TV purposes. There would also be split brand PPVs again, but this time each brand would have one each month instead of alternating like they did the first time around. What a difference having the WWE Network for $10 a month made; running two PPVs a month for $50 a pop would have been out of the question for sure.
Lastly, WWE would make a full effort to revive cruiserweight wrestling in the US with the Cruiserweight Classic to crown a Cruiserweight Champion and even started a new show, 205 Live, that highlighted the newly created division and introduced us to the likes of Mustafa Ali, Cedric Alexander and many others.
Soooooo…….what was good? What was bad? Was anything special?
The Good
One thing was super noticeable pretty quickly: the sheer volume of good to great ringwork grew exponentially, as you will see later. Between the new additions to the roster and the end of pulling double duty on Smackdown, the space was made to have better ringwork across the card on both shows and not just in a few spots here or there. Styles instantly made things better just by being there, so did the returns of Cena and Rollins. Charlotte coming into her own as a great in ring performer and matching her Horsewomen sisters helped raise the bar on the quality of women’s wrestling in the WWE. As someone who was a skeptic of hers in 2015 despite rooting for her to succeed, I was totally won over in 2016. That’s how far she progressed that fast and it made a huge difference.
The women’s division got rolling at full speed and it’s best stuff was on par with everything the men were doing. They stole the show at WrestleMania and had one of the best feuds of the year (and women’s wrestling history) when Charlotte and Sasha went to war over the RAW Women’s Title and even main evented a PPV at Hell in a Cell. But Smackdown was great in it’s own right with the new era Smackdown Six of Becky Lynch, Nikki Bella, Naomi, Carmella, Alexa Bliss, and Natalya. Those ladies went at it every week in every match combination you could think of and gave us some really great work that turned Alexa Bliss into a big star and facilitated the rise of Naomi and Carmella to being championship contenders.
The brand split itself was a good thing. WWE is going to run RAW and Smackdown for as long as someone is willing to pay them to run RAW and Smackdown. When the first brand split was wound down in 2012 Smackdown had become a taped show for whatever was on the cutting room floor from RAW so the matches were often just clip and save versions of their RAW counterparts with the same participants and the results were always spoiled on the internet before it aired on Fridays. Having two fresh, different live shows with different casts is always going to be better than that. Now was it a lot to keep up with? Yes. Too much sometimes? Sure. Did I try? NO. And that’s the best advice I can give anyone on how to be a wrestling fan in 2024. Catch the stuff live that you can, watch the rest as you have time, and prioritize the stuff that you actually want to see. Don’t struggle through stuff that doesn’t interest you for sake of seeing it all.
Lastly, the emerging awareness of wrestling outside of WWE was a good thing for me and everyone else. It’s always better when there is more than one place to look at it, both for us and the wrestlers themselves. Especially when you get to see different styles in the different places. New Japan Pro Wrestling beginning to break through was a revelation to a lot of people and we began to learn some new names like Kazuchika Okada, Tetsuya Naito, Horohmi Tanahashi, and many others. And when Styles left for WWE along with Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows, their departure allowed Kenny Omega to step into the void and ascend to the top of their card. Omega got more people to tune into Japanese wrestling than anyone did in years, and would soon win the G1 tournament and go on to main event WrestleKingdom the following January. It was the best of times in many ways for sure.
The Bad
The Road to WrestleMania was once again a mess. For the second year in a row, Roman Reigns was set up for a hostile reaction as this time there was some partiality from the audience being shown towards his Shield brother Dean Ambrose and still some vocal dissatisfaction that he was being pushed as the heroic babyface at the top. For the second year in a row at Fastlane they tried to show him ‘earn’ it with a win in the main event over someone that there was fan sentiment in favor of; in 2015 it was Daniel Bryan and in 2016 it was Ambrose. And just like in 2015 it didn’t really change anyone’s minds, and would dog him throughout the year. WrestleMania itself wasn’t great either. There were two outstanding matches, the six man Intercontinental Ladder match to open the show and the Women’s Triple Threat match. The rest of the matches on the card either went too long, had weird finishes, or were just plain bad.
WWE PPVs in general were uneven all year. There were lots of great matches but putting a great card was a struggle as virtually every one had a least one or two flat out stinkers on it. Figuring out a show of the year was a tough call this time around. That also can be said about the newly launched Cruiserweight division. The Cruiserweight Classic was a fun tournament and brought a lot of new people to light, but the winner and inaugural champion TJ Perkins did not get over with the audience and the division for all intents and purposes pulled out of the garage with engine trouble that it would never totally surpass.
There was one other bad thing. Unfortunately, one of the injured would not return as Daniel Bryan retired in February with a farewell speech on Monday Night RAW. Bryan would return as a GM on Smackdown later on in the year but for a while it looked like we had another premature end to a career, just five years after Edge had to make the same call.
Anything special happen?
Where do we start? The Royal Rumble saw the arrival of AJ Styles, one of the last few ‘never tried the WWE’ guys in America. (Yes I know he did some stuff way back in the day but I’m talking about once he became a legit star in the business). I had never seen and had only heard of Styles at that point. His heyday in TNA came while I wasn’t watching anything and was only keeping up through the occasional reading of articles on the internet. But even with my limited knowledge I got goosebumps like everyone else did. And thankfully I was not reading dirtsheets much then so I was totally shocked when it happened.
But there was more!
Women’s Wrestling went to a truly special place with the big showcase at WrestleMania 32 but also with the first epic feud of this era when Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks went to war over the RAW Women’s Title. Between TV and PPV they locked up seven times (8 if you count the Mania triple threat), had some great matches, some all timers, and made wrestling history. Going from bra and panties matches during the Attitude Era and a lingerie pillow fight at WrestleMania just 10 years prior to this was truly a sea change in how women’s wrestling was booked and presented in the WWE and was wonderful to witness.
And lastly, a year after Sting returned we got another return from none other than Goldberg! Unlike a lot of people in the IWC I am not a Goldberg hater. He was a favorite back during the Monday Night Wars and while he was limited as an in ring worker he was my kind of limited – a big man who did big man things and had all the energy and intensity. Seeing him come back was crazy. I figured he had hung it up and was good with everything. And then I figured he would be fed to Brock Lesnar to pick up a check. So when that match went the way that it did, and he shocked the world by running through Brock in short order, it was a crazy moment in all the good ways possible. When he hit that spear and jackhammer I didn’t just go back to the Monday Night Wars I felt like I was 12 again.
Awards – Who was the best?
Top 5 Male Wrestlers: 1. Roman Reigns, 2. AJ Styles, 3. Kevin Owens, 4. The Miz, 5. Dean Ambrose
This was the year the Roman showed exactly why he was in the position he has been in every since. And a big part of that was the duo of PPV matches he had with Styles. Both men delivered, and both went on to keep delivering 5 star work for the rest of the year. They were the two most consistently great men on the WWE roster that year from January through December. Both would hold the WWE World Title and main event multiple PPVs (Roman 8, Styles 5). Owens had a sneaky great year with big performances throughout. The Miz, with a big assist from his wife Maryse returning to work with him, revitalized the Intercontinental Title and made it important again with great work against a multitude of challengers. And Ambrose, despite a couple of hiccups, closed the best two year run of his time in the company winning the briefcase, the World Title, and getting wins over both of his Shield mates.
Honorable Mentions: Seth Rollins, Finn Balor, Dolph Ziggler, Shinsuke Nakamura, Kenny Omega, Kazuchike Okada
Lots of you guys will put Omega and Okada much higher than I did, but I was just starting to pay attention to New Japan and quite frankly did not see much of what they were doing in 2016. It would be crazy to not acknowledge them at all, though.
Top 5 Women Wrestlers: 1. Charlotte Flair, 2. Sasha Banks, 3. Asuka, 4. Bayley, 5. Becky Lynch
The Horsewomen fulfilled their takeover of women’s wrestling as they all held some gold at some point of the year and were in all the biggest women’s matches in the US. They had the best match of the night at WrestleMania 32 and main evented a PPV for the first time ever at Hell in a Cell. Charlotte made a huge leap in one year’s time; in 2015 she looked like somebody who was really talented but still learning on the job (which she has admitted herself) but by the end of 2016 she’d closed the skill gap between herself and the other Horsewomen.
Standout Matches
- AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura, WrestleKingdom
- Nakamura vs Sami Zayn, Takeover Dallas
- I-C Ladder Match, WrestleMania
- Charlotte Flair vs Sasha Banks vs Becky Lynch, WrestleMania
- Roman Reigns vs Styles, Extreme Rules
- Kevin Owens vs Sami Zayn, Battleground
- John Cena vs Styles, Summerslam
- Asuka vs Bayley, Takeover Brooklyn 2
- Flair vs Banks, July 25 Monday Night RAW
- Flair vs Banks, Falls Count Anywhere, RAW
- Men’s Elimination match, Survivor Series
- Goldberg vs Brock Lesnar, Survivor Series
- Miz vs Dolph Ziggler, No Mercy
- Styles vs Ambrose, TLC
Others worth your time: Kevin Owens vs Dean Ambrose at the Royal Rumble, Roman Reigns vs Brock Lesnar vs Dean Ambrose at Fastlane, Reigns vs AJ Styles at Payback, Miz vs Cesaro vs Kevin Owens vs Zayn at Extreme Rules, Reigns vs Rollins at Money in the Bank, Cedric Alexander vs Kota Ibushi in the Cruiserweight Classic, Flair vs Banks at Hell in a Cell, Reigns vs Rusev at Hell in a Cell, Women’s Elimination Match at Survivor Series
Match of the Year
Men: Roman Reigns vs AJ Styles, Extreme Rules
Women: Charlotte Flair vs Becky Lynch vs Sasha Banks, WrestleMania
Both matches are worthy candidates just on individual merit but the deciding factor for both are what they set in motion. The Extreme Rules match certified Styles in WWE as a main event level guy AND Reigns as a top level worker. And for the ladies the triple threat established on the biggest stage that it was a new day in women’s wrestling.
Show of the Year
WrestleMania 32. Was a great show? Not at all, and lots of it was bad. But it was the most significant WWE show of the year in that fully put the women’s division on the map and established Roman Reigns as the man to beat in WWE. WrestleKingdom 10 also qualifies; it was the sendoff for Styles, Nakamura, Gallows & Anderson and was the show that set things up for Kenny Omega, the Young Bucks, and Okada for the next few years to come.
Final Verdict
2016 was the opposite of the previous three years in that things were not great before WrestleMania but picked up tremendously afterwards. In fact I’d give the time up to and including WrestleMania a C and the rest of the year an A. The PPV cards were inconsistent as hell from start to finish but there were so many great matches and moments there and on TV.
As for me, I began to feel justified in sticking by Roman Reigns and I was totally on board with the new era of women’s wrestling. I got to see the Shield triple threat at Battleground and took in a few other shows. The Miz restored the feeling to the Intercontinental Title. And Goldberg made me feel like a kid again. Despite the scattering of some bad matches across the PPVs I had a great time for most of the year.
2016 gets an A from me.
The grade tally so far – 2012: B, 2013: C, 2014: A, 2015: A-
Stroke of Genius 