Sportskeeda WWE Awards 2017: Match of the Year

#1 John Cena vs AJ Styles - WWE Championship Match at Royal Rumble

The cream of the crop.

Our choice for the 2017 match of the year might not surprise many of you, but there's an extremely good reason for that. Undoubtedly, the apex of WWE action this year has to be the rubber match for the WWE Championship between John Cena and AJ Styles at the Royal Rumble PPV.

In a period where storytelling perhaps isn't Vince McMahon's forte, the meeting of Cena and Styles from 2016 was an incredibly special moment executed perfectly. It must have been tempting for Vince to just treat AJ like every other TNA/ROH start that comes his way. He could have slipped the "Phenomenal One" into the mid-card and pretended the past 10 years had never happened.

Instead, common sense prevailed, and the company decided to showcase the first meeting like the big deal we all knew it was. And from the very start, we knew the two legends had chemistry between them. The only question still remaining was, could they channel this chemistry and put on some high-quality matches as well?

The answer, emphatically was, yes. Cena and Styles have met a total of three times in single's competition since AJ's debut in WWE and they have easily put together the greatest trilogy of matches of WWE's PG/New Era.

Styles is quite simply a wrestling genius, often showing his fellow roster members up with how much of a gulf exists between him and the company's second best. When it comes to watching AJ perform, the question should not be, is this going to be a good match, rather, is Styles even capable of having a bad one?

That being said, it does take two to tango, and the fact that Cena has managed to keep up with Styles on three different occasions is the testament to how much the 16-time champion has come since his debut over 15 years ago.

This year's Royal Rumble PPV match for the WWE Championship will go down as an all-time classic, able to be enjoyed by anyone at any time. The fact that Cena equalled Ric Flair's record with his victory has almost been relegated to a minor, secondary point, and that pretty much says it all.