This Day in Wrestling History: The First Smackdown Live

In my opinion, 2016 is one of the most underrated years for the WWE in recent memory. Consider this in the first two months of the year the company had signed Shinsuke Nakamura, AJ Styles, Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson. Then the wrestling world was shaken to it's core when the prodigal son returned to the WWE and gave us a moment we wouldn't soon forget. I for one never thought that Shane McMahon would ever return to the WWE as he seemed to have found his footing and made a name for himself outside of the company. Even though things wouldn't really go well to get us to this point, but it did raise excitement and interest for the programming at the time. 

If all that had happened already wasn't enough then when the announcement of the WWE Draft came down it left people wondering what would happen next. The brand split had gone away in 2011 when the company chose to just allow all wrestlers on both brand instead of making them exclusive, but when reality hit and they figured out their roster was overexposed they needed to do something. It is for this reason that they chose to bring back the brand split with Shane & Stephanie McMahon being the top on air executives. Though things would start hot everything would cool off pretty quickly with them setting themselves up for the short term. 

WWE Smackdown Live 
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John Cena Def. (Pin) Luke Gallows
Darren Young & Zack Ryder Def. (Sub) Rusev & The Miz
3Bray Wyatt Def. (Pin) Xavier Woods 
Kane Draw (NC) Kevin Owens 
Charlotte & Dana Brooke Def. (Pin) Sasha Banks Handicap Tag
Chris Jericho Def. (Pin) Cesaro 
Alicia Fox Draw (NC) Natalya 
Dean Ambrose (C) Def. (Pin) Seth Rollins WWE Championship