Jon Moxley, 'Pretty' Peter Avalon and AEW's Biggest Winners and Losers of 2020

Each week, All Elite Wrestling updates its power rankings to reflect the win-loss records of those who competed on AEW Dark and Dynamite.

While that's great to keep track of the stats, what about the overall ups and downs throughout the year?

Looking back over the past 12 months, who could be considered the biggest winners and losers of the year in AEW?

Let's kick off this three-part series by focusing on the AEW roster's best and worst of 2020 before moving on to WWE in parts two and three coming Thursday and Friday.

Darby Allin is just shy of making our list despite winning the TNT Championship. That would normally make him one of the biggest winners, but he won the belt in a near-fluke and spent the majority of the year being tossed around and even put in a body bag.

Orange Cassidy also has a win over Chris Jericho on his 2020 record and stepped up this year to prove he's more than just a comedy act. However, others accomplished more.

Big Swole and Penelope Ford really came into their own this year. They've stayed in the top five of the rankings for most of 2020, scoring lots of wins on AEW Dark.

Surprisingly, The Dark Order achieved an impressive win-loss record, too. Better still, they managed to turn from an act no one seemed to like to lovable losers who are some of the most entertaining to watch.

In particular, John Silver has become the breakout star of the bunch and even won the Being The Elite Championship (though that belt is not an actual AEW title). Mr. Brodie Lee is the only one with a title reign after becoming TNT champion in August before dropping it two months later.

On the losers' side, plenty of wrestlers accomplished next to nothing this year as they were unable to compete because of travel restrictions. This meant people such as PAC and Shanna barely wrestled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Riho dropped the AEW Women's World Championship independent of that, so she deserves to be on the honorable mentions.

SCU also started the year losing their tag titles and never really regained their footing. Christopher Daniels spends more time behind the scenes than wrestling these days, Frankie Kazarian is a great utility player but not someone who is ever pushed, and Scorpio Sky's winning ways have come to a screeching halt.

They typically only win on AEW Dark, and even that isn't guaranteed. The same goes for plenty of other teams that could be here, like The Hybrid 2, but SCU's fall from grace makes their year even harder to stomach.

The beginning of 2020 may have been rough for Jon Moxley after having his eye poked by Chris Jericho in January, but he quickly turned things around.

At Revolution the following month, he defeated Le Champion to win the AEW World Championship, which he held for 277 days before dropping it to Kenny Omega on Dec. 2.

The majority of Moxley's year was spent taking out all those who stepped in his path, whether they were younger and more agile, like Darby Allin, bigger and more powerful, like Lance Archer, or more technically proficient, like Jake Hager.

Though it hasn't factored into AEW, he's also held on to New Japan Pro-Wrestling's IWGP United States Championship this entire time, too.

Moxley lost the AEW title to Omega in a screwjob, but that was around the same time he announced he will become a father in 2021.

While he had some rough battles along the way, there's no question he is one of the biggest winners of 2020.

If you're looking for someone who has had no direction since joining AEW, there may be no better example than Allie.

At first, she appeared to be one of the women at the forefront of the division and someone the company would build around. She had more experience than some others, was a more notable name and started a feud with Brandi Rhodes rather fast.

Everything went downhill even quicker, though, and in 2020, she not only didn't correct that course, she veered even further off the track.

Why was she paired with Rhodes to form The Nightmare Sisters? AEW abandoned her repackaging as The Bunny just to put her with QT Marshall and company, only for that to go nowhere.

There was no real payoff with that storyline. Worse still, the excuse for this reversion was that she "got bored." That was the best AEW could come up with, which likely means no thought was put into it.

During Chris Jericho's Rock 'N' Wrestling Rager at Sea Part Deux: Second Wave, Kenny Omega and "Hangman" Adam Page defeated SoCal Uncensored to win the AEW World Tag team Championships.

They held those titles from January 22 until September 5, when they lost the belts to FTR at All Out, ending an impressive 228-day reign.

That alone would have been enough to put Omega on this list, but he squeezed in an even bigger accomplishment before the year was out.

At Full Gear, he defeated Page to win the No. 1 contender's tournament for a shot at the AEW World Championship.

Then, on the Winter is Coming special episode of Dynamite, Omega executed what he claims to be a multiyear plan he concocted alongside Don Callis to screw Moxley out of the title.

There's no telling when he'll stop riding this wave of success. Perhaps he's already taken the first steps toward capturing the Impact World Championship, too.

Riho will go down in the history books as the first AEW women's world champion after she won the title in October 2019.

Two months into 2020, though, she dropped the belt to Nyla Rose on the February 12 edition of Dynamite.

Both had over 100 days as champion, which Hikaru Shida has doubled since dethroning Rose at Double or Nothing.

She's had a relatively easy run as champion because of travel restrictions preventing more talent from wrestling. Dr. Britt Baker has also spent much of the year on the shelf with an injury, and many in the division are still in the early days of their careers, so Shida remained on top.

In fact, she's been positioned as supremely above the rest of the roster. No matter how much Penelope Ford, Big Swole or others have improved, she's stayed a step ahead of them.

Last year, Joey Janela was struggling after suffering a series of losses. It was turned into a storyline where he was frustrated that he couldn't get the job done.

For almost all of 2020, that win-loss record has continued with the negatives outweighing the positives.

Janela has done nothing at all noteworthy. He's had zero feuds that were captivating enough to etch out a significant chunk of any pay-per-views, and he tends to wrestle more on AEW Dark or as enhancement talent on Dynamite.

Most of his positives come from being paired with Sonny Kiss, but he's not even the most captivating member of the duo.

Maybe 2021 will be the year Janela figures out how to turn things around. If not, he's likely in for another round of heavy losses with only sporadic wins.

It shouldn't be understated just how big of a win the AEW executive vice president had this year by getting the trademark to use his full character name, Cody Rhodes.

No longer will he have to just go by Cody or be billed alongside his wife or brother to circumvent legal loopholes. He can just be Cody Rhodes again.

That's a big win, but that's not all. He had an entire championship storyline surrounding him for the majority of the year, too.

As he had stated he wouldn't challenge for the AEW World Championship ever again, his focus was entirely on the midcard title, the brand new TNT Championship.

Not only did he defeat Lance Archer to become the inaugural champion, but he also held the belt for 82 days and only dropped it to Mr. Brodie Lee because of an apparent scheduling conflict.

As soon as that was cleared up and Rhodes was back on schedule, he won it back to add a second reign to his legacy.

While he's no longer the champion, it seems he'll hover around this division and make it his focus while others chase the world title. If that's the case, this is just the start for Rhodes being synonymous with the TNT Championship.

Last but certainly not least, the Rhodes family are expecting their first child next year, which is a great way to end their 2020.

Matt and Nick Jackson struggled for a good portion of the year, but they managed to turn things around eventually.

Despite all the arguments with their friends and the number of times they were attacked and left on the canvas, this was still the year The Young Bucks won the AEW World Tag Team Championships—and published their book.

They also won the titles by defeating FTR, settling a score that had gone on for years even before they were in the same company and allowed to properly feud.

The Twitter debate is over: The Young Bucks have proved themselves to be the best tag team in AEW, if not all of professional wrestling—and they have the gold to show for it.

Matt Hardy's run in AEW this year can be summed up by two things: rehashing old gimmicks and getting injured.

Even his debut didn't feel as big of a deal since it happened during the early stages of the pandemic when viewers weren't as adjusted to the lack of response in an empty arena.

Since then, Hardy has gone through every incarnation and gimmick he's had, and it's become a tired shtick. Even he seems to have pivoted away from those characters outside of Being The Elite as they weren't working well enough.

The Elite Deletion wasn't anything new. It's been done before and better, so it didn't wow anyone.

Sadly, the most shocking thing Hardy has been involved in has been his numerous gruesome injuries, but those aren't remotely positive. They were dangerous, scary and not at all what someone should strive for as the biggest takeaway for their year.

Here's hoping 2021 is better for the veteran. If not, at least it can maybe be safer.

MJF is clearly one of AEW's hottest prospects, so it goes without saying that he's a winner.

The 24-year-old has it all: youth, in-ring ability, microphone skills and that "it factor" few others possess.

While he didn't win the world championship this year, he did retain his AEW Dynamite Diamond Ring by defeating Orange Cassidy.

MJF also scored one of the rare wins over Jericho to set himself up to join The Inner Circle, which gives him considerably more power.

The gears are already in motion for him to turn that faction into his own. He's infiltrated the group and is close to pushing out his opposition.

It's only a matter of time before the work he put in during 2020 pays off in 2021 and he becomes one of the most dangerous people on the roster.

At the beginning of 2020, Miro was still performing in WWE as Rusev and stuck in a terrible storyline with Bobby Lashley, Lana and Liv Morgan.

This is by no means AEW's fault and not why he's on the list. Rather, it's the response to this that puts him in the loser column.

After leaving WWE, it felt like Miro could finally spread his wings with the newer company and turn his career around. In AEW, he could be something more than a joke character.

Somehow, though, he was brought into AEW under the storyline that he would be Kip Sabian's best man. He spent a generous amount of money to look out of place in a Mickey Mouse shirt and seem like an entirely different person...but not for the better.

Instead of being the badass everyone knows he can be, Miro has spent most of his time getting upset over wanting to play video games and having others get in the way of that fun.

He's started to have a more dominant presence, but the damage has already been done. He's now working uphill in an attempt to build credibility.

One of the most fun stories to track in 2020 was the feud and friendship between Brandon Cutler and "Pretty" Peter Avalon. They had the worst win-loss records in the company and were unable to score a victory.

This led to them forging a partnership, but they lost even more matches alongside each other. Eventually, they opted to fight each other, guaranteeing one of them would break the curse. But it still didn't lead to a victory.

That all changed on October 27, when Cutler defeated Avalon on AEW Dark, and they have both now won numerous matches on the YouTube show.

Cutler is gaining confidence (which may be his downfall), while Avalon has adopted the "Pretty" moniker and is more brash than ever.

They're winners in that they were entertaining all year in showing off how great they could be at losing. And now that they're actually coming out on top of their matches, it's just as much fun to see.

Anthony Mango is the owner of the wrestling website Smark Out Moment and the host of the podcast show Smack Talk on YouTube, iTunes and Stitcher. You can follow him on Facebook and elsewhere for more.