2016 was an overall incredible year for the WWE product. In fact, many have considered it to be the best year in the 2010s, rivaling only 2011. 2016 was exciting because the product as a whole genuinely felt fresh (to the most part) and we got to see a lot of new faces as well. Of course, the most important new face that we saw was none other than The Phenomenal AJ Styles.
There was a lot of skepticism over whether the former Impact Wrestling and NJPW star would make it, with many (including Styles himself) believing that he would be stuck in the midcard. Little did people know that he would take less than eight months to become WWE Champion.
But perhaps the most vital part of 2016 was the re-emergence of the brand split. While fans didn’t know that WWE would kill it off less than three years later, it played a huge role in improving the quality of the product, with SmackDown Live becoming the hottest show in all of wrestling.
Moreover, it resulted in a whole string of world-class, top-quality matches. It could be argued that it was the best year in WWE history in terms of match quality, and we struggled to pick the five best ones.
Next Page: 5 Best Matches Of 2016
