Unforgiven (2016) was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event and WWE Network event produced by WWE. It took place on July 24, 2016 at the Verizon Center in the Washington, D.C.. It will be the twelfth event under the Unforgiven chronology and it is the first Unforgiven event since 2008 and the final event prior to the new Brand Extension goes into full effect.
Nine matches were scheduled but ten took place as Shinsuke Nakamura cashed-in his Money in the Bank contract to win the WWE Championship to become the first Japanese world champion in WWE history. In the main event James Harrison won the World Heavyweight Championship for a ninth time, in a ladder match defeating his brother Matthew. This meant that both Raw and SmackDown had a world title going into the brand extension.
The show is also notable for Randy Orton's first appearance in a WWE ring after a nine-month injury. Overall the event was highly praised with Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter awarding his perfect five stars to the Nakamura–Styles match and the Harrison brothers match. The event saw 1.03 million pay-per-view buys, thus becoming the first WWE pay-per-view other than the Big 4 (Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam and Survivor Series) to pass one million buys, WWE owner James Harrison put this down to the heavily promoted Styles–Nakamura match and The Shield triple threat match.
Overall Unforgiven was highly praised as the WWE's best pay-per-view of 2016. Two matches, Nakamura–Styles and the ladder match recieved five star rating from Dave Meltzer, the US title match was the lowest rated a 3.75. Everything else scored at least four stars. On average matches scored 4.33 stars only NJPW's G1 Climax 25 Day 19 scored a higher average at 4.41 per match.
