Given the nature of professional wrestling, some guys and girls are bound to clash behind the scenes. It’s a business that requires a lot of egos to be present, and because of this, a lot of superstars get so invested in their character and their booking that they start to blow up the bridges they’ve spent years building.
Then again, some people just have a clash of personalities, and that’s not surprising given how often it happens in other sporting environments. Sometimes things can be resolved relatively quickly, but in these five instances the blood was boiling, and the heat between them was incredibly real - for longer than just a few weeks or months.
The majority of people here have kissed and made up in recent times, but that doesn’t remove the history between them. As fans, we always enjoy peeking through the curtain of WWE and seeing what things are like from a backstage perspective, and these incidents, in particular, are difficult to hide from the general public. If it were up to the company, the majority of these beefs would be swept under the rug pretty swiftly.
So with that being said, here are five sets of WWE superstars who hated each other.
#1 Edge vs. Matt Hardy
This is about as personal as you can get, with former friends Edge and Matt Hardy squaring off in one of the most hard-hitting feuds in professional wrestling history. Essentially, Matt Hardy and Lita were dating in real life when Matt was sidelined with an injury. Because of this, Lita decided to ride with a close friend of hers – Edge, also known as Adam Copeland.
The two began to get close and eventually they got together, which naturally led to a bitter hatred between Matt and Edge. The company ended up firing Matt before re-hiring him to turn this into an on-screen rivalry because of course, they did. Nowadays they’ve supposedly kissed and made up, but you can never be too sure.
Woo.. kind of.
#2 Bret Hart vs. Ric Flair
Bret Hart is the best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be – but for some reason, the guy feels as if this has given him the right to go around slating every single professional wrestler known to man. Of course, that’s a bit of an overstatement, but not when it comes to the Nature Boy Ric Flair.
Hart has called Flair out in the past by referring to him as the most overrated wrestler of all time; meanwhile, Flair has hit back by suggesting that Bret exploited the death of his brother Owen back in 1999. The two supposedly reconciled a few years back courtesy of Charlotte and Natalya’s NXT bout, but you can never be too sure.
Time for quite a public display of hatred now.
#3 CM Punk vs. Ryback
When CM Punk left WWE back in early 2014, nobody heard from the guy for months and months on end. Many were questioning why he walked away from the company; meanwhile, others were just worried about him as fans of his work, however, they needn’t have worried as Phil Brooks told his side of the story during his appearance on Colt Cabana’s Art of Wrestling podcast.
One snippet of the show included Punk tearing Ryback, who he dubbed ‘Steroid Guy’, a new one. He claimed that The Big Guy was reckless in the ring and took “twenty years off his life”, with Ryback eventually responding to the comments a few months later. It’s fair to say that they probably aren’t best pals to this day.
Oh boy...
Also read: 5 WWE moves that hurt like hell in real life
#4 Stephanie McMahon vs. Chyna
Way back when, Chyna and Triple H were something of an item with their partnership on screen being a case of life imitating art. Unfortunately for the former Women’s Champion, things went a little bit sour, with Chyna claiming that The Game started seeing the boss’ daughter Stephanie McMahon while they were still together.
Naturally, it created quite a beef between the two women for many years, which is probably one of the main reasons why she still hasn’t been inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame to this day. Given her tragic passing, we’ll likely never know whether or not they buried the hatchet, but we’d like to think that they did.
You knew this was coming.
#5 Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart
For years and years, Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart weren’t just rivals on screen, but they were also bitter enemies off it. HBK thought that Bret took himself a little bit too seriously; meanwhile, the Hitman wasn’t a fan of Michaels being the future of the business.
The pair's relationship then reached its nadir on one fateful night in 1997 when Bret Hart was the victim of the Montreal Screwjob, courtesy of HBK, Vince McMahon and a few others behind the scenes. It took well over a decade for the two to kiss and make up, and to this day, we can’t imagine that both men are still on great terms after everything that’s happened.
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