6 Ups And 6 Downs From WWE Backlash 2016

by Scott Carlson

1. A Stylish Title Win

AJ Styles WWE Title
WWE.com

The moment AJ Styles pinned John Cena clean in the ring, you knew that WWE had to be planning on striking while the iron was hot with the former IWGP Champion. You don’t just waste a victory over Cena like that, especially when a rematch against him isn’t on the horizon.

And so, AJ battled Dean Ambrose for the WWE World Championship, ultimately hitting the Styles Clash to capture his first taste of WWE gold. Styles and Ambrose had a really, really good match, breaking out some rarely seen moves, such as a chickenwing facebuster (Ambrose), catapult from the apron into the post (Ambrose) and a Rack Bomb (Styles). They had fans enthused throughout the match, despite not relying on constant near-falls and kicking out of each other’s finishing moves.

It was interesting to note that fans clearly started turning on Ambrose in the match, booing his comebacks and openly cheering for Styles, who won after hitting Dean with a low blow (to set up the Styles Clash) while the ref was bumped. All of this just reinforces that it was a good thing that AJ won Sunday night, and at least it was an excellent match to close out the PPV.

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.