1. Cesaro
Cesaro has accepted John Cena's Open Challenge twice now, but as both are deserving of this spot and genuine match of the year candidates, it makes sense to combine them here. After Tyson Kidd's unfortunate injury, it seemed like Cesaro was going to be left in limbo, and that made his role here all the more surprising. Cesaro took this opportunity to show what he's got, and when he locked in that Sharpshooter, it looked like the match might be really over. The fact that Cena was just weeks away from defending his title against Kevin Owens (who would interfere and cost Cesaro the match) obviously robbed both this and the follow-up of some drama which is unfortunate though. Regardless, their second match was just as awesome, and Cesaro's one mistake on the top rope - which he subsequently received an AA from - was what cost him the title. Despite losing the match, it's fair to say that Cesaro still won in some ways as he's since got the crowd behind him 100%, become only the second WWE Superstar to defeat Rusev via pinfall, and main evented Raw with Cena and Randy Orton. Cena taking the time to praise Cesaro after Raw went off the air hopefully caught the attention of those backstage and was generally just a very cool thing of him to do.