Put mildly, the year 2016 will go down as a notable one in the history books. It was a year that at times seemed to have events unfolding in real life that were lifted straight out of the professional wrestling "sports entertainment" playbook. It was a year where even the mighty NFL saw its television ratings take a hit, at least in some small part due to the reality show-adjacent aspects of the news and media coverage surrounding the 2016 election cycle and political happenings throughout the world.

Yet as the general level of discourse in the world outside the WWE Universe continually hit unseemly and indelicate lows, an interesting change was transforming the WWE, and its ever-expanding universe, for the better.

No matter your personal opinion on the merits of wrestling as performance art, or whether it lies closer to Cirque du Soleil or the Harlem Globetrotters on the live entertainment spectrum than it does boxing or MMA, wrestling can mean a million different things to the millions (and millions) of wrestling fans.

WWE proudly claims that their programming reaches 650 million homes worldwide in 25 languages, with corporate offices in nine countries. To the young fans with impressionable minds who consume their product, the diverse array of on-screen talent is a window into a world of multicultural awareness.

As a pro wrestling legend might say, oh it's true, it's damn true.

The WWE may not be one of the first examples many would cite as a shining example of positive representation of multiculturalism and the collective benefits of diversity and inclusion. However, fans and non-fans alike should take note of how the company has adjusted their approach to the presentation of their on-screen product and the impact it has on their diverse fan base.

Yes, once a bastion of cheap thrills and pandering to the lowest common denominator in the name of ratings at all costs, the WWE has grown up. The move to more family friendly entertainment in the post-Monday Night Wars, post-Attitude Era world was a divisive move among some wrestling fans.

Like any industry, keeping up with the way the world adapts and evolves can be challenging. Going "PG" was a shrewd strategy for the WWE as they underwent an evolution from a wrasslin' promotion shrouded in the mythology of kayfabe into a more transparent, globally recognized, integrated media organization potentially worth upwards of nine figures.

Many fans, casual, diehard, or somewhere in between, long for the days when wrestling was a white hot draw in cable television ratings. Yet in 2016, WWE won over fans and critics with a balanced approach of family friendly entertainment and overall match quality that is arguably at an all-time high.

One of the major reasons for the WWE's current success is the way they've adapted their approach to building future stars. Gone are the days where a wrestling prospect had to be freakishly superhuman in size to get a shot on the biggest, brightest stage pro wrestling has to offer this side of the Pacific Ocean.

A snapshot of the top tiers of the WWE's kayfabe power rankings will always yield many of the traditional archetypes. The ultimate good guy face of the company likely on his way to the most WWE Championship reigns in history. The third generation superstar with NFL tight end size. A handful of other performers whose families are no strangers to the squared circle.

Yet all throughout WWE programming, a diverse cast of on-screen performers have demonstrated that quality entertainment is not bound by a character or performer's race, gender, creed, culture, religion, size, or anything else.

In a well-crafted article of WWE.com's Top 25 Matches of 2016, the names highlighted tell the story. Of the top four singles matches on the list, none of the seven total performers (one wrestler pulls double duty) are white American men. The three Americans of the seven are a black man, a black woman, and a white woman whose father is a two-time WWE Hall of Famer.

Sami Zayn, a redheaded Syrian-Canadian who is a former independent wrestling star and alum of WWE's developmental brand, is the wrestler who performed in WWE.com's #2 and #4 overall matches of 2016. Four of his matches were on the list, tied for third-most among all WWE performers.

Of the nine wrestlers who appeared on the Top 25 list at least three times, six (seven, including American-born Canadian wrestling legend Chris Jericho) are American. AJ Styles, a white American man who was the lone wrestler to appear six times on the list, is a bit of a unique case as well. Generously billed at 5'11, the everyman sized Styles completed one of the greatest debut years in WWE history, after 15+ years of experience in other wrestling promotions.

But of the nine wrestlers who appeared most frequently on the WWE.com list, only Styles, Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins, and arguably Jericho are white American men. Canadian excellence in the squared circle isn't new, with Zayn and Kevin Owens doing their part to carry the torch for the next generation.

The #5 match on WWE.com's list was a second round matchup in a 32-man tournament of performers weighing in at 205 lbs or less known as the Cruiserweight Classic. The inaugural tournament, which was initially titled the Global Cruiserweight Series, sought out wrestlers from all around the world and ended up featuring wrestlers from 18 different countries.

The match that stole the show was between internationally famed superstar Kota Ibushi of Japan and Cedric Alexander, a black American who reportedly dropped 22 pounds to make weight. Neither of them had signed on with WWE past the duration of the tournament, though Alexander's performance earned him an impassioned show of respect from the crowd and a full-time contract.

Months later, WWE debuted a weekly wrestling show called 205 Live that exclusively features wrestlers in the cruiserweight division, giving many of the Cruiserweight Classic tournament alums a home, as WWE juggles with the enviable reality of having too much talent and not enough time.

A recent episode of 205 Live featured three official singles matches and an additional in-ring segment that vaguely resembled a match. Of the eight competitors, only one was a white American, Long Island native Tony Nese.

Nese's character is notably a heel, and was accompanied to the ring by Drew Gulak, another white American whose heel character recently lashed out at Alexander and his storyline girlfriend Alicia Fox with a sexist rant about not belonging ringside, despite Fox's credentials as a former champion in WWE.

Blatant sexism unfortunately has been around wrestling for a long time, but what's notable about this particular angle was that the behavior was coming from a character intentionally portrayed as a bad guy, reinforcing to the viewers that they are meant to boo and condemn the unacceptable behavior.

Meanwhile, another interaction with Fox's character after the match involved her dealing with an unwanted admirer in Noam Dar, an Israeli-Scottish budding star who has shined playing a sleazy womanizer character. Fox thus far has dealt with the adversity without falling into damsel in distress cliches.

Later on in the episode, a Pakistani-American performer who wrestles as babyface character Mustafa Ali, won a match in his hometown of Chicago and used his postmatch interview to thank the WWE fans for cheering him and embracing him as one of their own. For the performer and the character, who had previously expressed the desire to prove wrong those who judge him for his ethnicity, religion, and ring name, it was validation that WWE fans accepted him. The crowd response said that it doesn't matter what your name is. They simply saw a fun babyface with a sweet inverted 450 splash.

Other segments in the same one-hour episode of 205 Live included a gimmick segment furthering the feud between Iranian-American Minneapolis native Ariya Daivari and breakout star Jack Gallagher, a nontraditional British character that has captivated audiences through his unique, gentlemanly style.

It's been a multi-week feud that's been fueled by Gallagher's proper British gentleman babyface character and Daivari's frustrated, incredulous heel reactions to Gallagher and the crowd. At no point is Daivari's heritage used to generate heat from the crowd. He wears a keffiyeh on his way to the ring, but the foundation of his heel character is all about his resentment of Gallagher's behavior, not the "you stupid Americans" cliche that contributed to the failure of his real life brother's gimmick in WWE over a decade earlier.

Unfortunately, it's been commonplace throughout wrestling history for a non-white and/or non-American performer's gimmick to be essentially a thinly veiled stereotype, often exaggerated for heel heat. Even as we enter 2017, acts like Rusev and Lana still do the "you stupid Americans" shtick that never fails to get the crowd behind the babyface protagonists in Rusev and Lana's feuds.

However, even with the elements of familiar tropes surrounding them, in the post-kayfabe world of lifting the curtain on the performers' lives outside the ring, many fans embrace the men and women behind their favorite characters, regardless of how their characters are portrayed in the ring.

Rusev and Lana currently co-star on the wrestling reality show Total Divas, in which their lives at home in Nashville, TN and on the road in WWE are on full display. Any mystique of "the Bulgarian Brute" heel character who crushes opponents in the ring is complemented nicely by the happy couple's effortless natural charm that makes fans yearn for a babyface run down the road.

In a recent feud, Rusev, the then United States Champion, had fans chanting "U.S.A." to antagonize Rusev and support Roman Reigns, an American-born superstar and member of the famed Anoa'i family of Samoan wrestling royalty.

Not so long ago, it would be easy to imagine Reigns playing a savage character with racial undertones about his complexion, his tattoos, and his thick Samoan skull that's impervious to headbutts. Instead, Reigns has been embraced behind the scenes by WWE management as the next top star, due to his terrific in-ring work and his marketable look and presence in the ring.

Ironically, a large segment of the WWE fans have rejected the idea of the Roman Reigns character as a top babyface star, so much so that "Persona and reception of Roman Reigns" has its own Wikipedia page. But almost unanimously, the objections from fans come from a place of disillusionment over WWE's obvious fondness for the performer, which has sullied the character's casting as a hard-luck underdog in an era where fans know better.

Arguably no performers over the last few years have reached the heights of The New Day, a trio of wrestlers who from August 2015 to December 2016 held the WWE Tag Team Championship for a record 483 days, and became one of the most popular acts in the entire company after being allowed creative freedom to develop their characters after an ill-conceived gimmick with racially insensitive undertones seemed to have them dead in the water.

Instead, the three men bet on themselves and put their careers on the line trying to reshape their characters, using their frustration with their perceived inability to connect with crowds as fuel. They became shrewd, win-at-all-cost characters who had fun being themselves, a genuine and real performance that broke the shackles of heavily-scripted talking points, and turned The New Day into an unstoppable and lucrative merchandise-moving juggernaut.

In mid-December, members of The New Day sent out a tweet of the three of them with their Tag Team Championship belts, Cruiserweight Champion Rich Swann with his title, and Women's Champion Sasha Banks with hers. The five champions posed together with a photo caption that read "#BlackExcellence".

To some fans, it was an odd tweet. An unusually overt recognition of race in the wrestling industry. To many fans of color, it was validation that no superstar would ever again be held back by the color of their skin.

Kofi Kingston, a ten-year veteran whose run with The New Day has cemented his already bonafide future Hall of Fame status, responded to critics who wondered aloud why #BlackExcellence is not a controversial statement.

"Historically in our nation, there was period in time where this would not have happened, followed by a long period of time where it became possible, but had not actually materialized," Kingston wrote. "Now, we are in the time in which the possibility has become a reality."

"It matters because even though it is hard for some to fathom, the fact is that there are many people who feel as though it is impossible to attain certain goals because of the color of their skin. This is why we must acknowledge the color of ours in this instance. It is important for people of all races, but particularly people of color, and especially the youth, to see that it is entirely possible to achieve your dreams and aspirations regardless of your race."

"We are a shining example who want to be a source of motivation for others to believe in themselves and do the same. ... #BlackExcellence is not meant to be divisive. For even if you do not fall into the specific category, you can still take enjoyment in our pride, because in the biggest picture, in a society that often focuses on the negative aspects of race relations, what has transpired with the 5 of us speaks positively to the progress we've made as a nation."

Kingston is Ghanian-American, born in Africa, a Boston College grad with a communications degree who broke into the WWE as a one-note Jamaican stereotype character. His personal and professional success in over a decade in the industry is a microcosm of perseverance and hard work paying off.

It would be an oversimplification to state that minority performers succeeding at the highest level of the industry has single-handedly made WWE great again. But when performers of all backgrounds are given the same opportunities as white male American performers, the cream rises to the top.

Sasha Banks and Charlotte Flair, who feuded repeatedly on Monday Night Raw throughout 2016, together have combined for the first seven title reigns of the WWE Raw Women's Championship, which debuted this past spring. While there was many a hand-wringing over the decision to hot potato the championship back and forth several times over a six month span, it portrayed the two as equals, and every in-ring battle between them was must-see TV.

It became a common sight to see the Women's Championship storyline headlining the program each Monday night, on multiple occasions in the main event slot of the show. Between the babyface Banks and the heel Flair, groundbreaking mainstream women's wrestling took place in 2016 to healthy television ratings and rave reviews from critics and fans.

Flair, daughter of the legendary Ric Flair, has quickly become one of the most iconic performers in the entire company just four years after initially embarking in a career in the industry. Banks, who knows a thing or two about famous family herself, is one of the brightest young stars in the business.

Down in NXT, the two of them, along with "The Irish Lasskicker" Becky Lynch and rookie sensation Bayley, formed a foursome of performers dubbed behind the scenes as "The Four Horsewomen," an homage to the elder Flair's famous stable a generation earlier. The women's collective coming of age as backstage friends and on-screen rivals to wide acclaim is credited by many to be a turning point for how the WWE presents their women's division.

Now, as the WWE attempts to treat their female superstars and their storylines with the same fervor as the men, a new generation of young fans are growing up with a wide variety of role models on their wrestling shows, real life superheros who look like them, regardless of who they are and where they're from. That concept may not always be easy for members of traditionally privileged groups to understand, but that representation matters.

If America is traditionally thought of as a melting pot of cultural assimilation, perhaps it's time to be more of a salad bowl and take WWE's lead.

Nobody forced the WWE to treat undersized, or female, black, Latino/a, foreign-born, Asian, Indian, Filipino, European etc. performers with respect.

PC culture and diversity mandates didn't make WWE weak or boring.

The fact is, the WWE has embraced multiculturalism, inclusion, and respect because it's mutually beneficial to the company, the talent, and fans alike.

Which is to say that it's best for business. More so than that, it's just the right thing to do. In an era of world history where reality has become faker than wrestling, modern WWE is proving that celebrating our differences through the lens of our common interests is what truly makes us special. Believe that.