This is the next chapter of a year by year retrospective from my viewpoint as a wrestling fan. What did I watch, what was good, what was bad, which men and women were the best and what matches and moments stood out.
2019 was a year where a lot of Good, Bad, and Ugly happened and when it was over a lot of us were glad to move on. The New Year showed some promise; 2020 would offer us the first full year of All Elite Wrestling, a dream finally achieved in New Japan, an attempt at a comeback to relevance by Impact, some big returns and much more!
So just how was it?
The Good
The year started off great. The Royal Rumble was a really good show with some big moments and performances, including some big returns (more on that later). AEW Revolution in February saw Jon Moxley win the World Title and go on a good run as champion. And in New Japan Tetsuya Naito finally captured the World Title, albeit two years after he should have. Drew McIntyre would hit the World Title scene with a Royal Rumble victory, thus beginning to finally reach the potential that led Vince McMahon to once dub him The Chosen One. Things were moving nicely in WWE, AEW, and New Japan in the early months before the pandemic happened.
Roman Reigns found his way as a character after five years of great matches that were plagued by stop and start pushes and vocal resistance from a loud minority of fans. Some people had been calling for a heel turn for years but Roman smartly waited until he could do it his way and not like anyone had ever expected. And not only would he shock the wrestling world, the Bloodline Saga would turn around the direction the company was heading and lay the foundation for the boom period they are in now.
Let me just say that this was satisfying beyond all comprehension for me. For those of us who have been in the trenches with Roman from day one this was both a ‘I knew you could do it!’ and an ‘I told you so!’ moment. The Roman Reigns IWC essentially came to an end here because quite frankly there was nothing else to argue about. Roman beginning the Bloodline Saga here is what would lead to the turnaround of the companies fortunes and give it a compelling story at the top that had majority approval from it’s fanbase for the first time in many years, and laid the foundation for everything that came after.
On the ladies side, Bayley and Sasha Banks would go on the best character runs of their careers as the Golden Role Models, winning both singles titles on the main roster and holding the tag team belts at the same time (they would even be named the best tag team in wrestling in the yearly PWI rankings). Things were starting to look up outside WWE as well. Hikaru Shida would win the AEW Women’s Title and begin a year long title reign that would establish the title. Jordynn Grace and Deonna Purazzo would bring some prestige back to the Impact Knockouts title with their battles over that belt.
The Bad
COVID. There’s nothing in wrestling that wasn’t dragged down by COVID in 2020. Some PPVs got canceled, live TV got shut down for a while, and a lot of wrestlers rightfully opted out of participating for a while when it started back up. At one point there were real questions being asked about whether or not WWE’s broadcast partners would take some kind of action if they could no longer produce any live television for several months. WWE getting kicked off of live television would have been a mortal blow to the entire industry. TV has been the lifeblood of pro wrestling for decades and without some kind of broadcast platform you’re dead.
But that’s just the onscreen side of things. The entire industry was rocked by the closings. WrestleMania weekend is when a lot of indie promotions put on satellite shows that help them get into the black for the year and with no WrestleMania weekend festivities they were screwed. Smaller companies like ROH and MLW would be devastated and having to stop production for a while. WWE would release a ton of wrestlers during the height of the pandemic. Like a lot of companies they looked at the possibility of going several months without income and saw a need to shore up their balance sheet…….or they took advantage of the situation to let some people go that they weren’t very high on at the time anyway. It all depends on how you want to look at it, of course.
Then there was an elephant in the room that had been waiting for many years to roar. The Me Too movement found it’s way to pro wrestling with some shocking revelations about sexual harassment and sexual assaults at all levels of the industry. Several guys who had been engaging in behavior that should have ended or at least derailed their careers finally got what was coming to them while several others were dealt a higher level of scrutiny based on what they were accused of. I can’t say I miss any of those guys one bit who were sent packing from the industry; they were predators who should have been removed much sooner.
Anything special happen?
Edge returned! After nine years away, Edge would come back at the Royal Rumble and make us all misty eyed again. Like just about everybody else I’d accepted that he was done wrestling due to his injuries so when his music hit I was like ‘no…..it can’t be!’ and then when he emerged I was a kid again (even though I was already and adult when he debuted but you get it)
Edge wasn’t the only legend to make an improbable return. Sting would make his return at AEW’s Winter is Coming episode of Dynamite in December. We last saw Sting in September 2015 at Night of Champions where his back literally gave out during a match with Seth Rollins. Like Edge it looked like he was done so it was a huge shock when he showed up here and began what would become a great 3 year run to close his in ring career.
Awards – Who was the best?
Top 5 4 Male Wrestlers: 1. Drew McIntyre, 2. Roman Reigns, 3. Jon Moxley, 4. Seth Rollins
Honorable Mentions: Randy Orton, Keith Lee, Jey Uso, AJ Styles, Bobby Lashley, Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, Tetsuya Naito, Bray Wyatt, Braun Strowman, Damien Priest
I went with a top 4 instead of 5 because in my book there just weren’t five men who stood above the rest in 2020. There were plenty who were very good but for one big obvious reason (COVID) no one other than Drew put together 12 months that you could say qualified here. Roman ultimately had the biggest impact, one that is still being felt over four years later, but was gone from late Match until he returned at Summerslam. Moxley carried the flag for AEW for most of the year and did it admirably, and Rollins had a great run as the Monday Night Messiah up through September-ish. Everyone else you can think had a few great weeks or months here or there but nothing resembling a great year.
Top 5 Women Wrestlers: 1. Bayley, 2. Sasha Banks, 3. Asuka, 4. Hikaru Shida, 5. Deonna Purazzo
Honorable Mentions: Charlotte Flair, Io Shirai, Bianca Belair, Rhea Ripley, Shayna Baszler & Nia Jax, Jordynne Grace
Bayley did a great job all year and like Drew was the only one on her side to go all 12 months fully active and performing at a high level. Sasha is a close second, with her only knock being that she wasn’t active until like April because of an ankle injury. Asuka did go all 12 months but was effectively relegated to light duty after September by no fault of her own. Shida and Purazzo held the fort down admirably in their respective companies all year.
Standout Matches
- Men’s and Women’s Royal Rumbles
- AJ Styles vs The Undertaker, WrestleMania 36
- Charlotte Flair vs Rhea Ripley, WrestleMania 36
- John Cena vs Bray Wyatt, WrestleMania 36
- Charlotte Flair vs Rhea Ripley vs Io Shirai, NXT Takeover In Your House
- Jordynne Grace vs Deonna Purazzo, Emergence Night 2
- Roman Reigns vs Jey Uso, Night of Champions
- Roman Reigns vs Jey Uso, Hell in a Cell
- Bayley vs Sasha Banks, Hell in a Cell
- Randy Orton vs Bray Wyatt, TLC
Others worth your time: Women’s Elimination Chamber Match, Triple Threat Ladder Match at WrestleMania Night 1, Io Shirai vs Sasha Banks on NXT Television, Grace vs Purazzo at Slammiversary, Men’s Wargames at NXT Wargames, New Day vs Street Profits at Survivor Series, Roman Reigns vs Drew McIntyre at Survivor Series
Match of the Year
Men: Men’s Royal Rumble – From the first half with Brock vs the World to Edge’s magic return to the closing sequence, just a masterful effort from start to finish. It was also one of the most significant matches in that it set the tone for much of what came during the rest of the year from Drew’s ascension to Edge’s return
Women: There are three that I couldn’t decide between – Flair vs Ripley at WrestleMania, Grace vs Purazzo at Emergence and Banks vs Bayley at Hell in a Cell. If you told me I had to pick one then I’m going with the one that my favorite wrestler was in, especially since she won it. Flair vs Ripley it is.
Show of the Year
Royal Rumble
It was full of good to great matches and had the magic moment of the year when Edge returned. And it was the one and only big PPV of the year that was not dampened by the specter of COVID. Brock had his great run through the first half of the Men’s Rumble, Edge came back, and Drew McIntyre began his run at the top. On the women’s side Bianca Belair was introduced to the larger WWE audience and we got another spectacular return:
The two Rumble matches alone seal it. The show happened on the day Kobe Bryant died in a tragic helicopter crash, and for those of us needing something else, anything else to go on that day this was it. There were some other great shows but I challenge you to find any show that year that made people feel like this one did.
Final Verdict
2020 was a surreal experience. I actually went to the last Monday Night RAW before everything closed down, and let me tell you it was a scary thought knowing that you had just been in a closed space with thousands of people just as a virus was starting to spread all over the place. On a personal rooting interest note my favorite man and woman in wrestling hit some big marks – Charlotte would win the women’s rumble and Roman would take over the business as the tribal chief. But those two things were not enough to overcome the overall weirdness of watching WWE at the PC in an empty building, or with the weird hockey glass setup, or finally in the Thunderdome.
For an overall grade, my first inclination was to give it a C. The circumstances made things weird beyond anyone’s control and the people who worked the shows did an admirable job, but there was a cloud over everything that was made everything harder to enjoy. There were some fun adaptions and improvisations that took place but week to week the whole thing was kinda bizarre. Not bad or good, just strange. All in all though, pro wrestling was a thing that helped a lot of us make it through a year where we couldn’t go anywhere thanks to our buddy COVID. So for how well things were going at first, and to applaud the effort that was made they get a B- from me.
The grade tally so far – 2012: B, 2013: C, 2014: A, 2015: A-, 2016: A, 2017: C, 2018: B, 2019: C
Stroke of Genius 