10 Things You Didn't Know About WWE In 2016
Triple H's vision of WWE takes shape, Charlotte Flair takes over and Kalisto takes off...
2016 WWE was sort of...awesome.
Change almost never feels like change in WWE. For a brief period in 2016 though, as the promise of the prior year's developmental revolution threatened to actually stick, WWE's carefully branded change actually felt worthy of believing in.
In and around AJ Styles' thrilling WWE Championship series with Roman Reigns in the spring and the reintroduction of the Women's Championship, the company pushed a "New Era" slogan, though like Coke, The Rockers and "and NEW WWE Champion, Jinder Mahal", that word typically only allows things to burn brightly for a brief time before they burn out.
In this case, the company made sweeping changes to ensure the reality didn't stray too far away from the fiction. The rosters were split properly for the first time since 2002, the tag and women's divisions on SmackDown and Raw were given their own distinctive titles and identities, and the shows were separated by more than just the colour of the ropes.
"Firsts" fell out of the sky - Women headlined (and wrestled inside of) Hell In A Cell for the first time. Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt were almost immediately amazing together in their first programme. WrestleMania went over seven hours for the first time. Okay, not all of the firsts were good, but there were still plenty of them to enjoy.
And as for the seconds...
10. John Cena Didn't See The Need To Sign AJ Styles & Others
To Arn Anderson we go for a remarkable quote on what John Cena himself once thought about some of the names that would help transform WWE's roster in 2016.
'Double A' said;
"I [was] sitting with Cena one afternoon, and I said, 'It would really beef up the company if we went out and stole Bobby Roode, AJ Styles and James Storm....If you brought those three guys in it would give you a whole plethora of new opponents, it would give a lot of guys new opponents.' John looked at me and said, 'we've got NXT, we make our own stars. I'm sure he was just transferring Vince's psychology to me when he said that, but I knew at that time what those guys could do in a match for John."
The legendary figure wasn't wrong - though James Storm only worked twice for the black and gold brand before returning to Impact Wrestling, Bobby Roode had an excellent run on NXT and AJ Styles was indeed the guy that could do great things for 'The Champ'.
The pair's 2016 series (and Royal Rumble 2017 payoff) remains celebrated to this day, serving as a neat epilogue to Cena's joyous United States Title run.