A.J. Styles has had a phenomenal 2016 for WWE. And it's just his rookie year. The 39-year-old debuted for the worldwide leader in sports-entertainment this January at the Royal Rumble. Now that the Royal Rumble is the next pay-per-view again, and Styles has completed his rookie year in the company, let's take a look back at his extremely successful MVP year for WWE.

Styles' debut at the Royal Rumble was greeted with a raucous ovation from the fans in attendance. He was recognized by the WWE fans after years spent as the franchise star of TNA. Styles is also known for his time in Ring of Honor and New Japan Pro Wrestling.

After the Royal Rumble, he teamed and later feuded with all-time WWE great Chris Jericho. They had a great match at Wrestlemania 32, the biggest Wrestlemania ever and Styles' first. It was a loss for Styles, but the next night on Raw, Styles earned an opportunity to fight for the WWE Championship against Roman Reigns.

At the Payback and Extreme Rules events, Styles and Reigns had incredible matches. During this feud, Styles reconnected with his buddies Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows from Japan to form "The Club," a version of their group from Japan called The Bullet Club. In both matches, Styles came up just short in capturing his first WWE Championship. After two match-of-the-year candidates against Reigns, Styles got to face the guy who has been the franchise star for the WWE over the last decade -- John Cena.

In order to face Cena, Styles turned heel, which means he portrayed the villian for the first time in his WWE career. Styles and Cena had classic matches at Money in the Bank, Battleground (6-man tag), and Summerslam. I believe their Summerslam encounter was the match of the year. And Styles actually beat Cena clean, which doesn't happen to Cena often. It was the best match that I saw all year and Styles' other matches aren't far behind. I think you can see a recurring theme here. It was during his feud with the biggest star in the company where Styles really started to improve on the microphone.

In July, the WWE split their roster into two, creating unique rosters for Raw and SmackDown. No longer will wrestlers be able to appear on both shows, except for the handful of co-branded pay-per-view events. A.J. Styles was drafted in the first round, fourth overall by SmackDown. Since the draft Styles has been the featured guy on SmackDown, which led to a feud with new WWE Champion Dean Ambrose.

At the first SmackDown-only pay-per-view event Backlash, Styles defeated Dean Ambrose to win the WWE Championship. After years of being a big fish in a little pond in TNA, and wrestling for various independent promotions around the world, Styles was now the champion in the biggest promotion in the world. He had another fantastic triple threat match with Cena and Ambrose the next month in his first title defense and a classic TLC match with Ambrose in December. Also, at Survivor Series, he led Team SmackDown in a 5-on-5 elimination match against Team Raw, which SmackDown won, although Styles was eliminated by Seth Rollins.

Now that 2016 is coming to a close, and with him closing the year as WWE Champion, I think it's fair to say that A.J. Styles has been WWE's MVP. Especially considering he had match-of-the-year candidates with Roman Reigns at Payback and Extreme Rules, John Cena at Money in the Bank and Summerslam, Dean Ambrose at TLC, and the Survivor Series elimination match. That's an incredible resume for your rookie year in WWE. It's got to be up there with the best rookie years ever along with Brock Lesnar. What makes it really special is that he's doing it at 39 years of age. He's improved leaps and bounds on the microphone and he was already arguably the best in the world in the ring. He was even able to forgo NXT, which seems obligatory to any stars to WWE brings in, with the exception of Styles, Anderson, and Gallows. After the great year Styles has put together, I am excited for what 2017 has in store for him.