WWE: 10 best matches of 2016

2. Team RAW vs. Team Smackdown Men’s Elimination Match – Survivor Series

I might catch a little heat by putting this traditional 5-on-5 Survivor Series Elimination Match ahead of Ambrose and Styles but I loved this match. It was full of big spots and memorable moments and I have no problem in saying that this was the best traditional Survivor Series match in WWE history. Yeah, I thought it was that good.

I don’t think there was one WWE superstar that came out of this match looking bad. Not one. Let’s go through this quickly. First of all, I thought it was very shocking that Dean Ambrose was eliminated first but it served a purpose to further the storyline between him and AJ Styles, who were scheduled for their TLC match just a short time later. So they get into it and then Ambrose eats a powerslam from Braun Strowman, who picks up arguably the biggest pin of his short career. But then Strowman gets eliminated five minutes later and didn’t have to get pinned or submitted to get eliminated, thus keeping his monster image intact. Instead, he has his leg held onto by James Ellsworth who was hiding under the ring at the time. And then we get one of those “Holy S%&*” moments when Strowman launches him off the ramp onto a table. Both of these eliminations happened AFTER 16 solid minutes of wrestling.

Then we get to Kevin Owens, who got himself disqualified by destroying The List of Jericho on AJ Styles and Y2J was hit with an RKO 45 seconds later, all of that furthering that particular storyline. From there, we get 10 more minutes of solid action before Shane McMahon got completely obliterated with a spear from Roman Reigns while attempting his across-the-ring jump. I’m still trying to figure out if Shane was supposed to have his shoulder up following that destruction or if he just had a spasm due to being knocked out. And if you haven’t seen Randy Orton break character and walk over to Shane’s son to let him know that he was okay, go check that out. It only adds to how cool this match was.

And then the audience got what they wanted as Dean Ambrose made his way back down to the ring to assist in eliminating AJ Styles by reuniting with his former Shield brethren for the Triple Powerbomb. So we get a Shield reunion and more fuel to the fire that became the last match I talked about. And from there, we basically have The Shield vs. The Wyatt Family, albeit with both teams having a little different look. And much to my surprise, Bray Wyatt ends up pinning both Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns to pick up the victory for Team Smackdown. It was about time for Wyatt to get a meaningful win and they’ve picked up momentum since then by winning the tag titles.

Now that was just the eliminations. There’s close to an hour of amazing wrestling in this match, and combined with everything else this match had, that’s why it’s sitting in this number two spot.