12 Wrestling Rivalries That Were Too Real To Be Fake
8. The Rock Vs. John Cena
The Rock's departure from WWE in 2004 created a vacuum at the top of the card that John Cena ended up filling. By the following year, Cena was the number one man in the company.
He headlined WrestleMania in 2006 and 2007, but he wasn't grateful to The Rock for stepping aside and affording him that opportunity.
In a 2008 interview, Cena criticised The Rock for having not worked with WWE in years. Cena said that The Rock had found a new passion, which was fine, but he was offended that "The Great One" still claimed to love wrestling even though, in Cena's mind, he hadn't displayed that.
Needless to say, The Rock - whose 2004 departure was due to a slight on WWE's part and took too much pride in his wrestling career to, as Cena suggested, "do the eyebrow once and get out of town" - wasn't happy.
Rock and Cena didn't air their grievances until 2011, when The Rock returned to WWE to host WrestleMania XXVII. The Rock-Cena feud ended up overshadowing Cena's program with The Miz, and a lot of the barbs the two men delivered to one another had some truth behind them.
Still, being professionals, they were able to patch things up and work together, going on to make a lot of money over the following years.