10 Wrestling Stories That Massively Backfired In 2020

7. Tessa Blanchard Wins Impact World Championship

For all of 2019, Tessa Blanchard was the most heavily pushed star in Impact Wrestling. It was clear the promotion was set to push her to the moon and make her the first female Impact World Champion in history. Unfortunately for the promotion, things didn’t pan out as smoothly as they would have liked.

Just days before her planned title win at January’s Hard To Kill pay per view, reports emerged of Blanchard making extremely racist comments to other workers in the past. While she has passionately denied these comments, much of the shine was taken off of her win. It didn’t get any easier for Impact after this as Blanchard took the title and went home during the pandemic, refusing to return to work.

As a result, the promotion stripped her of the title and fired her. What should have been a historic and fondly remembered moment for Impact became more of a tainted memory.

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6. Jeff Hardy’s A Junkie

Hey guys let’s talk about drugs! Jeff Hardy’s troubled past has been well documented and thankfully a tough 2019 forced Jeff to clean up and go to rehab. A touching series of videos hyped up Jeff Hardy’s return to SmackDown after WrestleMania but rather than giving him a warm welcome back, WWE chose to shove his substance abuse problems right in the limelight.

Upon first glance this rivalry against Sheamus seemed to be solid enough. Jeff Hardy is a good wrestler, Sheamus is a good wrestler, together they should have good matches and to their credit, they did. The problem was in all of their other segments. Sheamus framed Hardy for drunk driving, charming story that, and fans were already tired of Sheamus constantly referring to Hardy as a junkie, but then things got worse.

Sheamus had Hardy take a urine test in the ring, featuring that one meme doctor guy pretending to be an actual doctor.

That’s right, Hardy went behind a curtain, whipped out his Swanton and produced a gigantic jar of stinky yellow liquid, and then he tossed his pee pee in Sheamus’ face. Welcome back from rehab Jeff.

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5. Otis Wins MiTB

The Climb The Corporate Ladder Money in the Bank match was a fun time if you wanted to point and laugh at what the funny wrestlers were doing, featuring the supposed death of both Rey Mysterio and Aleister Black, but don’t worry there was a smaller roof underneath. The men’s side of things built to the crescendo of comedy character Otis winning the Money in the Bank contract by proxy in the biggest punchline of the night.

For a few weeks, Otis lurked around Braun Strowman as a constant reminder of what could happen at any moment and then… well nothing happened. It seemed as if WWE came up with their funny joke to have Otis win the briefcase and then FORGOT he had to actually keep the briefcase.

Otis practically disappeared from television for a time before starting a feud with The Miz and John Morrison. Fans were growing frustrated with Otis as they felt robbed of having a real Mr. Money in the Bank in 2020, especially considering it has been five years or more since we have seen the briefcase holder have an extended run with the gimmick. Plus the women’s Money in the Bank match was actually competing for the Raw Women’s Title itself so we didn’t even get a briefcase holder on the women’s side either.

At Hell in a Cell, Otis lost his briefcase to The Miz and WWE has practically swept the whole thing under the rug since. And Tucker even turned heel on him at the show. Did you forget? Because WWE sure did.

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4. Seth Rollins vs Rey Mysterio In The Never-Ending Feud

If you wanted to put together a feud that would have some classic matches, on paper, Seth Rollins and Rey Mysterio would be near the top of the list. Rollins is still one of the best workers in WWE and Mysterio’s legendary status speaks for itself. When the two entered into a program the night after Money in the Bank, fans had every reason to be excited.

So, what went wrong? Well, in short, kind of everything. To ignite their rivalry, Rollins crushed Mysterio’s eye in the corner of the ringsteps. Okay, that’s new and different, I’m into it. But then Mysterio returned to challenge Rollins to a match where you have to pull out your opponent’s eye to win. Uhhh okay, that’s a bit weird. Then they had the match and Rollins somehow got Mysterio’s eyeball out of his head by pushing it into the stairs again… and it was a CGI eyeball. Okay, no, you’ve lost me.

What followed was month after month of some sort of Seth Rollins and/or Murphy vs Rey Mysterio and/or Dominik Mysterio combination, which at least showcased Dominik’s skill as an in-ring performer. 

Then it got all muddled again with the inclusion of Aalyah Mysterio as Murphy’s love interest, and then Murphy joined Rollins again, but only to betray him the following week and then Murphy is part of the Mysterio family now and then Seth Rollins sacrificed himself at Survivor Series for the greater good. It was a bit of a flat ending to what could have been a great two month feud.

• wrestling stories
• 2020
• AEW
• wwe

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