30 WWE Images That Defined 2016

8. AJ Styles Wins The WWE Championship

Shane McMahon
WWE.com

AJ Styles holds the WWE Championship aloft, having defeated Dean Ambrose in the main event of Backlash.

Unfortunately, Dean Ambrose's first run with the WWE Championship will probably be looked back on as an underwhelming one, featuring a curiously downplayed Shield triple threat, and a disjointed face vs. face feud with Dolph Ziggler.

In hindsight, it therefore seems obvious that AJ Styles (WWE's most impressive performer in 2016 by a country mile) would be booked to defeat Ambrose, but the result at the time was a monumental one. Seeing Styles - a man so often synonymous with everything but WWE - finally hold the big one ranks up there as one of the most significant, mind-blowing moments of the belt's illustrious history.

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Highly overrated 23 year old from the North East of England. Hanging off of your gangster car.