10 Best Wrestlers Who Never Held The IMPACT World Championship
Jay Lethal, Desmond Wolfe, and others who deserved to be IMPACT's World Champion.
At the time of writing, All Elite Wrestling's Kenny Omega is slated to challenge for the IMPACT Wrestling World Championship on Sunday, 25 April. Several months into the IMPACT-AEW working relationship, and that still feels like a weird sentence to type.
Should he win the title, not only will he make professional wrestling history, but he'll also become the 29th person to ever hold the championship, joining the ranks of Austin Aries, Alberto el Patron, and other canceled wrestlers.
In all seriousness, though, this is a huge deal.
Wrestlers winning championships while not under contract in that promotion has happened before (WWF's Tazz beating WCW's Mike Awesome for the ECW World Heavyweight Championship being a notable example), but this is AEW and IMPACT we're talking about. One is the new best thing in town, creating headlines with everything they do. The other, however, is on a bit of a resurgence in the world of wrestling, redeeming themselves as a legitimate contender for wrestling fans to take notice of.
If Omega wins their title, it'll be talked about for years to come. Just like how some of these guys should have been IMPACT World Champion...
Writer's note: this list only takes into account the current version of IMPACT's top championship, and therefore there are no should-have-been NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champions under the IMPACT banner included.
10. MVP
MVP has been doing tremendous work over the past year as part of The Hurt Business. The traces of that group, however, can really be traced back to IMPACT Wrestling circa 2014.
The former WWE United States Champion had been partnered with Bobby Lashley (funny, that) and current Ring Of Honor star Kenny King. It seemed an odd group at first, but it clicked soon enough. It clicked so much to the point MVP had a World Championship match with then-champ Eric Young at the 2014 Slammiversary pay-per-view.
There's only one problem there; MVP suffered an injury right before the pay-per-view. The future 'World Class Maniac' was instead scheduled to defend against both Bobby Lashley and Austin Aries, who had defeated Samoa Joe and Kenny King, respectively.
Other than a title match that November vs. Bobby Roode, this was as close as MVP came to the title.
This is surprising, really, considering how big of a role MVP actually played in the mid-2010s era of IMPACT. He - in storyline - had total control of wrestling operations for a time. MVP used this to give himself a title match, the aforementioned Slammiversary bout vs. Eric Young. Instead, his first World Championship run just wasn't met to be.