10 Best Wrestlers Of 2020
2. Kenny Omega
AEW Dynamite's first year was never about presenting Kenny Omega as the star.
This was clear from the offset, as he was booked to lose feuds with Chris Jericho and Jon Moxley, forcing him down the pecking order and out of the weekly rankings. Then, if the booking patterns weren't obvious enough, company officials (including Matt Jackson) explicitly stated that it'd be year two before AEW pushed 'The Best Bout Machine' button. Despite this, some still took Omega's upper-midcard positioning and toned-down presentation as evidence that despite all the six-star matches, accolades, and awards, the internet's favourite wrestler couldn't cut it as a weekly television performer.
Those people were wrong. Dreadfully so.
A new 'Cleaner' has ascended in the wake of his split from Hangman Page. Omega's aloof, flippant arrogance and increasing villainy has made him one of the most absorbing characters in the game, though his excellence stretches far beyond the past few months.
February saw Omega wrestle a genuine Match of the Year contender against PAC on Dynamite. Three days later, he and Page faced The Young Bucks in a bout immediately hailed as one of the greatest tag clashes of all time, accelerating an excellent reign that ended by FTR's old southern hands at All Out. Flashes of his old 'Cleaner' self kept peeking through, foreshadowing a turn that wasn't complete until Omega and Don Callis robbed Jon Moxley of the AEW World Title - a moment made infinitely more important by the groundwork peppered throughout 2020.
AEW is a company that rewards viewers for paying attention, and nobody embodies that more than Kenny Omega. The foundations of his late-year crescendo prove this.