4 Ups & 2 Downs From Impact Wrestling (Dec 29)
1. The Wrong Choice
Fan opinion is crucial to the development of a wrestling promotion - or, at least, it should be. That's why Impact's end of year awards for 2020 have been rightly deserved by their respective winners, bar one award. That award? The Match of the Year award.
As we saw at the end of last night's episode, that was revealed to be Slammiversary's main event: Eddie Edwards vs. Ace Austin vs. Eric Young vs. Rich Swann vs. Trey Miguel for the vacant World Championship.
Sure, it was a decent match and all, but by no means was it the right winner for Match of the Year. Even that night, we saw matches which were superior to that one, namely Willie Mack and Chris Bey's X Division Championship clash, and Deonna Purrazzo and Jordynne Grace's war over the Knockouts Championship. The latter of those two bouts then had a similarly great contest at Emergence the following month - the first knockouts Iron Man Match no less.
We should take nothing away from Eddie, Ace, Eric, Rich, or Trey, of course, as they put in the performance of their lives there, and it led us into the Young vs. Edwards, and then Young vs. Swann rivalries. It just shouldn't have been crowned the 2020 Match of the Year in Impact Wrestling.