WWE Survivor Series: 5 Best World Championship matches in the PPV's history

#2 Bret Hart vs. Bob Backlund (1994)

Bob Backlund had quite a break between World Title reigns.

The backlash for the end of this match was, especially for its time, pretty huge. It was doubled by what happened just three days later. Imagine if Twitter was around when the face of WWE, Bret Hart, was defending his title, on one of the biggest shows of the year, against a guy who, outside of a handful of matches in different promotions, had not been a truly active wrestler for 10 years.

The age gap wasn't huge. Hart had recently turned 37 and lost the WWE Title to Backlund had recently turned 45. Backlund, just three days later, lost it to Diesel, who was 35.

For perspective, when AJ Styles won the WWE Championship for the first time he was 39. He beat Dean Ambrose, who was 30, and lost the title to John Cena, who was 40. These two series of events are almost exactly 23 years apart, and nobody really batted an eye.

Getting past that little math/history lesson -- Hart versus Backlund. It's 1994. Backlund has been gone for a decade and was being considered as an old man in a young man's sport. Bret defended the WWE Title against Backlund in the summer in a match billed as "Old Generation vs. New Generation", and Backlund was unable to win the title.

At one point he thought he won and his celebration ended up costing him the match. That led to the crazy Mr. Bob Backlund character that most people who have been watching wrestling for the last 25 years or so (most of us kids) know.

After months of going crazy, then acting normal, crazy, normal, ad nauseum, his past got the best of him and he once again became the challenger for Bret's WWE Title. This time it was a special submission match in which the only way to win was to incapacitate your opponent to the point where their cornerman would have to throw in the towel. It was based off of the way he lost the WWE Title in 1983, when he didn't submit, but instead lost because his manager threw in the towel.

The two men put on an absolute classic match, with technical wrestling, intensity, submissions, and the kind of ring psychology that only two masters like Hart and Backlund could create.