At number three, no Impact Wrestling fan will be surprised to see the name Bobby Roode. For a man that spent most of his career in the tag ranks, Roode showed in 2012 just how big a singles star he could be.
Roode’s TNA career started out as a member of Team Canada. He would become one of the group’s longest running members, teaming regularly with Eric Young and winning the NWA World Tag Team championship twice. After Team Canada’s disillusionment, he spent a short time as a singles star, but an unsuccessful feud with Booker T spelled the end for that push.
With “Cowboy” James Storm at the tail end of an unsuccessful singles bid, the decision was made to repackage the two stars as a new team, Beer Money Inc. Over the next several years, they would become the most dominant TNA World Tag champions of the last decade with four wins that total over a year with the belt.
The Bound For Glory Series brought Roode to the main event of “Bound For Glory” in 2011, but he would be unsuccessful in resting the title from Kurt Angle. His partner James Storm would do it a week later, only to drop the title in turn two weeks later to Bobby Roode, when Roode laid out his best friend for years with a beer bottle shot.
He would go on to become the most dominant, longest running TNA World Champion of all time with a reign of 256 days. He would often use every devious technique in his defenses, often to the aggravation of his foes. But he also showed he had all the talent needed to remain as one of the top stars of a promotion working hard to build new stars for the future. Even after losing the title to Austin Aries at "Destination X", he has still dominated the main event in the closing months of the year.
Roode may not win the World title again in 2013, but his role as a dominant star for Impact Wrestling has been cemented.
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