10 Meanest Backstage Wrestling Feuds

It’s no secret that one of the most celebrated onscreen feuds in WWF/E history was amplified and accentuated by a backstage rivalry as personal and vindictive as the grudge playing out in the ring.

The issues between the two men didn’t flare up for a long time. Michaels had returned to the WWF with his tag team partner Marty Jannetty in July 1988, and he and Hart had always gotten along remarkably well for the most part. That is, until 1995, when Michaels began to form the Kliq with Kevin ‘Diesel’ Nash, Sean ‘1-2-3 Kid’ Waltman and Scott ‘Razor Ramon’ Hall.

Aside from Nash (and later Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque), the Kliq were notorious pill and booze addicts, and as Michaels steadily travelled upward towards the main event and an inevitable feud with Hart, his party animal issues worsened, his arrogance and attitude problem sneaking to the fore.

By 1996, Hart was the WWF’s main event mainstay and the WWF Champion heading into WrestleMania XII - and Michaels was the main earmarked to take the title from him in a passing of the torch. As WWF Champion, that HBK attitude only worsened.

The planned WrestleMania XIII rematch with Michaels failed to materialise when Michaels claimed to have injured his knee and ‘lost his smile’. The unspoken implication was that Michaels had no intention of putting Hart over, even in a non-title match.

Upon Michaels’ return, the bad blood between the two came to the surface as they resumed their feud. Every in ring promo seemed to have that extra little personal dig. Hart, a man who held himself and others up to high moral standards, was a known philanderer - Michaels made sly reference to that in a promo insinuating that the Hitman had been sleeping with WWF Diva Sunny.

In July 1997, these tensions boiled over in a backstage altercation that saw Hart rip out a clump of Michaels’ hair. The Heartbreak Kid was livid, and things between the two went from bad to worse. Then Vince McMahon dropped a bombshell, admitting that he couldn’t afford Hart’s brand new contract after all. He was headed to the competition, WCW.

The idea was that he’d drop the title to Michaels at Survivor Series on November 9th, but Hart refused. He’d been playing the heel everywhere except Canada, where he was still a national icon - McMahon had no reason to protect the character of a man on his way out, but Hart had contractually mandated creative control for his final days in the company.

Hart couldn’t bring himself to lose in Montreal, where he was a hero, to a man who’d disrespected him and his country so much in public, and who he had come to despise in real life. He offered to drop the title the next night on RAW instead.

Well, everyone knows what happened next. McMahon agreed a finish to the match that Hart could live with, and then doublecrossed him to give Michaels the win and the title. Hart left the company that night after knocking McMahon out backstage, and like all the best feuds, the direction changed after the blow-off angle - now it was Hart vs. McMahon, and would remain so for the next dozen years.

Hart and Michaels, on the other hand, didn’t speak again until Hart’s return to the WWE, where each man was able to achieve a measure of closure, and even regain a measure of the friendship they’d had before.