By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Dot Net readers were allowed a single vote per day for each of the 2020 awards categories. The following are the results of our poll for Pro Wrestling MVP along with our staff comments. Thanks to everyone who took part in the voting.
1. Drew McIntyre (25 percent)
2. Jon Moxley (22 percent)
3. Roman Reigns (18 percent)
4. Chris Jericho (5 percent)
5. Kenny Omega and Asuka (Tie – 5 percent each)
Others (20 percent)
Colin McGuire’s Thoughts: It might be cliche, but there are reasons cliches are cliches, and while this could have gone in any direction — Bayley, Sasha Banks, Kenny Omega, Jon Moxley, the list goes on and on — I’m going to go with Drew McIntyre for this. Why? Well, that’s where the cliche comes. He was the strongest man in the biggest company on earth all year. Roman Reigns had a nice half-year, but Drew gets overlooked because he’s as good as he is. He’s a good babyface champion, one who fights when called upon. His in-ring work is very good, and his matches with Randy Orton were some of the best in his career. And he’s likable. The die-hard, snob-centric fans don’t detest him, which is a big victory for a WWE champion these days. And the casual, looking-to-be-entertained fan that checks in once every few weeks seems to support him as well. Nobody says anything bad about the guy. And he was tasked with keeping WWE running while a global pandemic brought the entire sports world to a halt. It might not be sexy to put the biggest company’s champ here, but he deserves it.
Anish V’s Thoughts: Heel Bayley should always have stood as a far off dream, much like the allure of heel John Cena. But after some suspect booking, Bayley was seemingly forced into a heel role and I have to say that she has done a phenomenal job of making it work. In the past year of extremely strange wrestling, Bayley was the most important person to a single company, by the sheer volume of her work. There were points this past year where Bayley was on all three brands, a PPV and anything else WWE threw at her in a week, while carrying two championships and multiple storylines. Big props to Bayley for making a heel turn that should have never happened work in difficult circumstances, so much so that the whole company was on her back.
Nick Perkins’ Thoughts: I debated back and forth between Drew McIntyre and Chris Jericho for this award. For Drew’s part, he led the company during one of the strangest years in its history. He was reliable, entertaining, and he was the best champion WWE could have had in this situation. But, my nod has to go to Chris Jericho because he is one of the few veterans who really is using his name to get the future stars over. Whether it was losing the title to Jon Moxley, feuding with Orange Cassidy, or partnering up with Sammy Guevara and/or MJF, Jericho is using his legacy to help build the legacies of others. He lost the AEW Championship when he needed to, because Jericho didn’t need the title. And he has spent the last 12 months building up the company for a time when he is no longer around. Jericho is as entertaining as he ever was, but he’s not the focus of the entire show. He knows what to do, and when do it, when it comes to making stars he is absolutely the MVP of pro wrestling, but he’s especially the MVP of AEW. On a side note, mark my words, next year, this category will belong to Daniel Bryan for very many of the same reasons.
Jason Powell’s Thoughts: Jon Moxley is the coolest guy in a business that sorely lacks wrestlers who possess a cool factor. Drew McIntyre was the lead babyface that WWE desperately needed during the pandemic and was often involved in the only good segments on terrible Raw shows. But Roman Reigns felt like the biggest difference maker. I don’t care that he missed a few months due to the pandemic because he did what he felt was right for himself and his family. Hell, I applaud it. But he got my vote because of the spark that he gave WWE and its true flagship television show from the moment he returned. By the way, this is another category that experienced some major turnover, as last year’s winner Chris Jericho was the only person in the 2019 top five to make a return appearance (Becky Lynch, Cody Rhodes, Adam Cole, and Kazuchika Okada were also in the 2019 top five).
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