WWE: Ranking Every PPV from 2016

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2. Battleground

The two men pictured above are the biggest reasons why Battleground comes in as our second best PPV of 2016. Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn had a feud that dated all the way back to NXT, but WWE never quite gave it the depth that it had during those days. Instead, they booked the two men to face off countless times without much reason other than they hate each other. That made their “final showdown” at Battleground a little unexciting leading into it, but they absolutely squashed that notion.

Owens and Zayn somehow topped all of their previous encounters in this one and put on, in my opinion, the best match of all of 2016. They pulled out all the stops, and when Sami Zayn set up Owens for one final Helluva kick, it was nothing short of amazing.

In addition to Owens vs Zayn, we got the long-awaited Shield triple threat match with Dean Ambrose looking to defend his title against Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins. This was also the final PPV before the brand split was set to go into effect, so Ambrose was fighting to keep the title with Team Blue. He succeeded and ultimately celebrated with Shane McMahon, Daniel Bryan, and much of the SmackDown roster to close out the show.

A couple other positive notes from this event were Bayley’s debut as Sasha Banks’ mystery partner, as well as the Wyatt Family vs the New Day in a match where Bray Wyatt continued to “possess” Xavier Woods. Woods added a lot to that entire feud by acting shaken up by Wyatt’s actions, and seeing it all come to a head was awesome. Battleground overall absolutely shattered expectations and comes in at number two in our rankings.