10 Best Simultaneous WWE/WCW Heavyweight Champions
2. Shawn Michaels/Ric Flair - 1996
Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair were the natural foes for Bret Hart and Randy Savage at the top of both organisations in 1996, just over a decade before they'd get to craft one of the finest retirement matches in industry history as iconic elder statesmen.
'The Nature Boy' was fond of putting himself over as wrestling's "60-Minute Man" for much of his career, but it was Michaels who went beyond the hour to claim his first WWE Championship as spring turned to summer in 1996. Flair, bizarrely, was working his magic commercially yet again - World Championship Wrestling (and Shawn's mental state) would be spun upside down by the arrival of the New World Order in the months to come, but business was spectacularly healthy on either side as if to foreshadow the boom period ahead.
Just weeks before Michaels' WrestleMania ascension, WWE sold out Madison Square Garden with 'HBK' and 'The Hitman' on opposing sides of a tag match. At the same time, Ric Flair's title trades with Randy Savage were flogging tickets and keeping ratings strong. Within a year, both men were frazzled and bedraggled versions of themselves thanks to the wildly divergent paths the two organisations took.