10 Car Crash Wrestling Matches That You Absolutely Adore

SummerSlam 2005 was out of its mind.

A couple of hours before the Hogan and HBK match, we had a baffling continuation of a worked shoot angle involving infidelity, firing and lots of blood. In case you don't know the context, Matt Hardy got injured while his girlfriend Lita stayed on the road. She and Edge, a longtime friend of Matt, embarked on an affair as they travelled together and when Matt found out, he loudly talked s**t about the two of them online and ended up getting fired, which didn't make fans of Matt happy, to say the least.

With fans naturally behind Matt and Edge/Lita both becoming the most hated heels on the roster in the aftermath, WWE planned a feud to be kicked off at SummerSlam, with Matt coming back before the PPV to attack Edge and set the match up. Fans assumed that Edge would get decimated by Matt, who would take cathartic revenge on the man who took his job and girlfriend. They were wrong. Edge practically squashed him, busting him open and repeatedly targeting the wound to keep the blood flowing down his dazed face. Matt got in very little offence and looked humiliated and beaten, trying desperately to continue the fight but failing, and losing by referee stoppage, taking another loss on the behalf of his former friend.

This nightmare spectacle holds up as one of the strangest, most compelling feuds and matches of the Ruthless Aggression era, and defined Edge as a generational heel, a man who'd steal your girl and beat you bloody for thinking of revenge. It's a divisive match, many fans of Hardy believed the humiliation was unfair and downright cruel, but it's one of the most effective and disgusting squash matches ever.

There's never really been anything like it since.