Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
Happy Thanksgiving to all our American readers! For everybody else, Happy Thursday! As is the tradition here on the blog, we have our Top Five Wrestling Turkeys for the year. Basically, the very worst in pro wrestling this past year. And what a year 2020 has been. What bombed, flopped or simply stunk in professional wrestling?
Brian
5. Retribution
The jury is really still out on this faction and how WWE chooses to utilize them. As for now though, it really can’t be seen as anything other than a flop. WWE heavily advertised that a brand new faction was coming to WWE. For weeks, we saw a bunch of masked men and women vandalize WWE property and attack wrestlers and employees. They were being called Retribution, which made it sound it was a bunch of formerly fired wrestlers coming back for revenge on the company.
Instead, it was a combination of NXT and underused main roster talent that formed the group. What was supposed to be a rogue group of disenfranchised wrestlers wanting to wreak havoc upon WWE….suddenly and inexplicably were signed to WWE contracts. Huh?!? To add salt to the wound, the members were given odd names like T Bar and Slap Jack and given silly looking masks to wear.
They then revealed that the vastly underused Mustafa Ali was the leader of the faction. While I love that Ali is finally getting much deserved TV time, the faction of Retribution itself hasn’t left the mark it was intended to. At least not yet.
4. Tessa Blanchard as Impact Wrestling World Champion
In January of 2020, 3rd generation wrestler Tessa Blanchard defeated Sami Callihan to become the first ever recognized female to hold a men’s world heavyweight title. While Impact wrestling was attempting to be ahead of the curve and progressive, her reign as world champion left somewhat of a black eye on both the title and the promotion. Once the Covid -19 pandemic hit, Blanchard made the decision to self isolate herself with her boyfriend down in Mexico.
The company now had to deal without having its top title and champion on their shows. When Impact was heavily promoting a pay per view match between Blanchard and Eddie Edwards, the company reportedly asked Tessa to send taped promos to use to help build the match. Tessa never sent anything back to Impact management. As her contract was getting set to expire, her and Impact could not come to a financial agreement.
Rumors swirled that Tessa was demanding a big raise from her last contract. This was something that Impact and its parent company Anthem Sports could not justify doing especially with Tessa being away from the promotion for months. The decision was made to not only strip her of the title, but also terminate her contract before it was set to expire. This was definitely not a good look for either side.
3. AEW’s Handling or Mishandling of Matt Hardy Injury
At AEW’s All Out pay per view, Matt Hardy faced off against Sammy Guevara in a Broken Rules match. During the contest, Hardy took a bad bump legitimately knocking himself out cold. Once Matt Hardy came to, the match was restarted and went to a quick finish.
While AEW owner Tony Khan told the world that Hardy did not suffer a concussion, Matt’s wife Reby was very vocal and criticized AEW for allowing the match to initially continue. She also insisted that her husband did in fact suffer a concussion. Regardless, after the show, many critics and even die hard AEW fans said considering all that is known about head injuries….the match should have been stopped then and there.
2. Vince McMahon’s Loyalty Issues
Let’s face it, the pandemic hit everybody pretty hard financially. Vince McMahon and WWE not excluded. In the middle of the uncertainty of the virus and the impact on the world itself, McMahon and company began “trimming the fat” so to speak and released several wrestlers, road agents, production staff and office personnel. WWE is a publicly traded company and they need to continually show profits, it is somewhat understandable if some staff has to be fired or furloughed.
While all that may be true, some of the names that were fired by McMahon left quite a few eyebrows raised. Names like Gerald Brisco, referee Mike Chioda and former ring announcer Tony Chimel just to name three, were pretty surprising. All three were loyal employees of the McMahon family for decades…not just a couple of years here and there. It simply looks really bad on Vince to do such a thing to longtime employees like those. Financial reports be damned.
1. The Speaking Out Movement Exposes Pro Wrestling
In June of 2020, the Speaking Out Movement exposed several wrestlers from practically every major wrestling promotion around the world including WWE, AEW, Ring of Honor, Impact Wrestling, New Japan and various independent groups of an assortment of allegations. From sexual harassment to sexual assault…a myriad of wrestlers and wrestling executives (Some well known, others not so much) were accused of unthinkable crimes.
Some turned out to be false, while others accusations turned out to be true. In any case, what the Speaking Out Movement did, was bring to light the very ugly side of professional wrestling. Overall, it was a good thing for many of these stories to be brought forward. It did leave a very big black eye on the industry and many wrestlers careers are now over because of it. Hopefully, things behind the scenes can begin to change for the better.
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