Talented primadonna with rock-star style versus hard-working family man with national and professional pride from a vaunted wrestling family. This sounds like a match perpetually made in heaven, right? Of course that is, until the primadonna insinuates that the professional is cheating on his wife in real life while cutting a (supposedly) worked promo, and the professional presumes that the primadonna is secretly currying too much favor with the boss. Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart are two of the best wrestlers of all time. Sadly, as people they are polar opposites, and in an era where fan tastes were changing, what made Bret a "good" person made him "bad" in the eyes of the fans, and vice versa for Shawn Michaels. That breeds nothing but enmity and profound hatred, so when Hart and Michaels feuded from 1992-1997, the matches began to take on a more pronounced level of violence that in culminating with the Montreal Screwjob at Survivor Series 1997 almost feels like a fitting conclusion. In a manner similar to so many on this list, Vince McMahon's ability to allow for Bret and Shawn to use the worked world of pro wrestling as a place to air their real-life frustrations led to so many matches and ultimately so much profit, too.
Besides having been an independent professional wrestling manager for a decade, Marcus Dowling is a Washington, DC-based writer who has contributed to a plethora of online and print magazines and newspapers writing about music and popular culture over the past 15 years.
