It's time to bid farewell good riddance to 2016 - but not before we look back at the year of professional wrasslin'! The year that gave us the "New Era" of WWE, which was a term that was used for the hottest of minutes back in the spring before getting unceremoniously dropped for no particular reason. The era was new, and then it wasn't. We were entering a fresh and exciting age, and then we weren't.
This was also the year when WWE decided to go full-tilt bonkers with their WWE Network programming, offering up something like 7000 hours of things for our eye and ear holes. To make things mathematically more apropos of nothing, Michael Cole informed us that if we were to watch one hour a week -- just a single hour -- it would take us 20 years to get through all the content. Also, if you laid out all the content, stretched it out end to end, it would wrap around the earth five times. So much science. Can't handle the science.
Suffice it to say, in these desperate hours of Peak TV, where we saw 455 scripted shows pass before our faces over this past year, there was also too much goddamn wrestling - you know, for someone looking to manage their time and somehow not spend most every waking hour watching it. If you're up for a good ol' fashioned monopoly of product though, the Network's a great deal. There's the back catalogue, the original shows and specials, the PPVs, NXT, and now a cruiserweight show. Plus, rumors of an all-female wrestling show sift through the fog-filed air as we slowly creep out of this holiday season. This model is allowing for a lot of indie stars to rise up and perform on a higher platform - though will it eventually come at the cost of the indie scene as a whole?
All of which is to say, it's time to curl up with the year-end Wrap Up. Stuck with friends and family who don't give two s***s about wrestling? Find comfort in the Wrap's warm bosom of acceptance and bosom-ness. Thank you to all y'all who've been ingesting this column - whether you're a recent reader or you've been partaking since... 2007? Holy hell, it's going to be a decade of this pretty soon. What a world.
Here's your year of Deans and Romans and AJs and Sashas and stuffs and things. It's been a 365-day whirlwind of suspensions, retirements, brand splits, and breakfast cereals about butts.
The bizarre contrarian lab experiment that is Roman Reigns continued in 2016, beginning with him capturing the world title from Sheamus and then losing it to Triple H at the Rumble. This guy, man. This "THE GUY." As was the case last year, Roman's a tainted brand. Even IF someone wanted to cheer for him, which we did during that one RAW when he beat Sheamus, the natural inclination now is to boo. No matter the actual sentiment of the boo'er. It's simply the sound you make when he walks out. It got to be such an issue that the announcers resorted to commenting on the sheer volume of the crowd's "reaction." Yes, Roman's had such a presence that it made noises come out of people's mouths.
This continual pushing of Reigns TO THE TOP remained problematic. During the "Road to WrestleMania," Dean Ambrose actually had to feud with Triple H for over a month so that Roman could be kept off TV (and get a nose operation of some sort). Then Roman was placed into a feud with the super-over AJ Styles. Then he got suspended WHILE HE WAS WORLD CHAMP, kept off TV for 30 days, dropping the title in his return PPV. All while the everyone jeered at top volume.
The one time Roman truly shined this year was when he became an unintentional part of the coolest wrestling .gif of 2016...
BAM! Bray's made of magic!
As I write this, Roman's poised, perhaps, to become world champ again. Sorry, UNIVERSAL champ (more on that later). He's still being booed like a batch of burned biscuits, but apparently they might give him the nerf again and tell him to blerf. I guess if the Battle Damage He-Man flak jackets are selling, all's well on Snake Mountain.
With Roman being a constant cyclone of contempt and rejection, and Seth Rollins out injured, it was time for Dean to rise up and grimace his way to the top. Dean shined as Roman's "Road to 'Mania" surrogate, taking on Triple H back at Roadblock: Start of the Line. Then he got a match with Brock at 'Mania and I WAS SO EXCITED. I'd been wanting a Dean/Brock feud for year. Unfortunately, the match was kind of a tire fire. Later, on the Stone Cold cast, Dean would reveal that Brock didn't want to anything cool and/or dangerous, which pretty much explains why nothing cool and/or dangerous happened during the match.
Dean would then get into a heated potted plant/$15,000 jacket feud with Jericho for a few PPVs, but then Roman's suspension helped push The Shield's iffiest engine to the apex of the biz. He'd cash in his MITB case (AT the MITB PPV!) and take home the big prize. Dean would lose it a few months later to Styles, but this was the year Dean came into his own more or less. Dean's a great heel and a great babyface - something the other two ex-Shielders can't really claim, as we've watched both Reigns and Rollins struggle as tweeners. Dean may not be the "lunatic" they've tried to sell him as, but he's very much the shady second cousin your mom would never let you hang out with at family reunions.
Continue on for AJ Styles, Goldberg, and more...
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