WWE Network Has Posted The Company’s Choices For Match Of The Year


One of the most fun parts of being a pro wrestling fan is … the wrestling. Duh. Specifically, getting near the end of the calendar year and picking apart what you think was the Match of the Year. WWE has been giving out Slammys for the company’s chosen Match of the Year for a while now, and it’s pretty much the only Slammy anyone takes seriously. (Note: no one takes that Slammy seriously, either.) We here at With Spandex have pretty much already sewn up our Match of the Year, but the debate will surely continue to rage on long into Royal Rumble season.

WWE Network has posted a collection of 20 matches from 2016 that it has deemed WWE’s very best matches of the year. We don’t know if this officially acts as a short list for next year’s Slammy of the same name, but we can pretty much assume so. The great news is that they pretty much nailed it, and NXT and the Cruiserweight Classic are very well represented, to say nothing of the year AJ Styles had. It was also a shockingly great year for Sami Zayn, even though the guy won like two matches in all of 2016.

You can find the entire collection right here, so click that link to begin diving in. Rather than a list form, the matches are listed in chronological order. The matches included (all links lead to our With Spandex recaps of the relevant shows):


There’s no telling whether WWE Network will end up adding more matches to this collection, as the most recent match on the list is from No Mercy in October. One hopes that they will, because the glaring omission here is, of course, Revival vs. GargChomp II from NXT TakeOver: Toronto. And the slightly less glaring omission is the most recent Sasha Banks title win over Charlotte in their Falls Count Anywhere match from Raw.

Other than that (other than the actual Match of the Year being excluded, I mean), this is a pretty spot-on list, and posting them in chronological order means fewer people will get up in arms about the whole thing. Also, kudos to them for not being afraid to include Bálor vs. Rollins, even though the crowd spent the whole match crapping all over the Universal Championship belt. It was a terrific match. Not as good as Cena-Styles from the same show, but they included that, too! Everybody wins!

×