Best Wrestling Storyline Every Year 1989-2024

36. 1989: The Mega Powers Explode

While it mostly unfolded across 1988, the Mega Powers actually exploded in 1989.

Randy Savage was a maniac, the most believable act in a cartoon world, when Hulk Hogan - in Savage’s paranoid, unravelling mind - had lust in his eyes for Miss Elizabeth. This worked precisely because Hogan did, for months on end, get in Savage’s way in his bid to appear as the big hero. The WWF relied on his broad appeal and drawing power to mitigate the risk that he would appear to be a sanctimonious glory hog. They just about nailed it.

Every tease of Savage reaching the “boiling point” was incredibly well-done, and the fans loved the novel idea of the top two babyfaces coming together. This was the magic. More was more and greed was good in the late 1980s. Watching the imminent explosion was agonising.

The match actually wasn’t fantastic, but WrestleMania V was the biggest money-spinner on pay-per-view ever - and while a fantastic, well thought-out saga sold it, if you were on the fence, Savage’s “I hate your stinkin’ guts!” go-home promo convinced you.

The man was crying as if in an unshakeable, fresh grief.

35. 1990: Mitsuharu Misawa Vs. Jumbo Tsuruta

Wrestling is a long, arduous and sometimes obligatory thing. It never ends. You often know the direction and are made to wait a long old time to get there. Sometimes the anticipation is incredible. Sometimes there’s a lot of “Get to the point!”

In 1990, famously, a long line of All Japan Pro Wrestling fans chose Mitsuharu Misawa as their next hero ahead of his match against Ace Jumbo Tsuruta. They queued up to Budokan Hall hours before the opening bell and chanted his name. Relentlessly. Booker Giant Baba was moved to disrupt his booking patterns and book Misawa to go over at the eleventh hour. Jumbo tried to petition him with a counter-offer of a count-out job. Baba refused.

The legendary June 8 match was so great because it was worked to extract every morsel of hope. It was the perfect build towards the most desired, almost inconceivable finish. The resulting programme, stretching deep into 1991, was incredible too. The gravity and importance of Misawa’s win wasn’t undermined. He was still the Ace; Jumbo however wouldn’t relinquish the spot so easily, and teamed up with some younger talent in a bid to retain the throne.

Younger AEW fans: imagine if a Chris Jericho feud was really great and phenomenally effective, and you’re close.

34. 1991: Randy Savage Vs. Jake Roberts

This gets the nod on the strength of one angle, mainly, but what a goddam angle.

The angle might be the most important and challenging aspect of the entire pro wrestling racket. Nowadays, it’s almost impossible for two pro wrestlers to work an actively bad match on the cable TV stage. Promos are challenging - very easy to do poorly, easy enough to do quite well, very hard to do and build genuine anticipation ahead of a match - but the angle requires true creative flair.

Is there a better angle in WWE history than Jake Roberts attacking Randy Savage with his cobra?

Deftly foreshadowed at SummerSlam, it was absolutely terrifying, unconscionable, shocking. The snake legitimately bit Savage’s arm, and its head darted and lunged around so violently that you were afraid it might jump out of the screen.

It was so good too that it made perfect sense of the plot hole that often accompanies the heavy heat angle: there’s absolutely no way anybody was rushing the ring with that thing in there.

It was hardly a classic, Savage’s win at This Tuesday in Texas, but it was good, and it paid off a daring, creative tale of a believably evil man torturing the redeemed man you’d just fallen back in love with.

33. 1992: Ric Flair Vs. Randy Savage

Once again, the WWF drew on Randy Savage’s intensely believable jealousy to drive one of its better programmes.

Knowing what fans know of the real-life Randy Poffo, there’s more than a hint of ickiness to it in retrospect - but at the time, this was shockingly creative.

Ric Flair - again, more ickiness - was cast perfectly as the arrogant braggart who insisted that he had bed Miss Elizabeth before she ever met Savage. Mr. Perfect, Flair’s mate, was equally great. His smug expressions were fantastic; that demeanour, which pecked at Randy’s psyche all the more, oozed naturally out of him.

Flair had evidenced his claim by creating manipulated photographs of him canoodling with Liz. This phenomenon was hardly brand new - hoaxes were common in the early years of the 20th century - but the digital, über-realistic element passed the smell test in 1992.

Truly creative and truly believable, the premise was superb, and it worked as a main event-level programme through the WWF fandom’s profound attachment to the Savage character (and of course the brilliance of the blow-off).

Getting more drama out of the Liz/Savage pairing, after the happy ending of WrestleMania VII, was even more impressive than the WWF’s rare embrace of cutting-edge technology.

32. 1993: Bret Hart Vs. Jerry Lawler

Jerry Lawler proved that comedy is all in the delivery in 1993.

Everything he said about Bret Hart’s parents was ripped out of a decades-old jokebook, but Jesus Christ, the sheer splatter gun giddiness with which he tore them apart was hysterical.

Bret Hart became the King Of The Ring by entering one of the all-time great one-night performances. He sold a debilitating injury throughout three very different matches, one of which, against Mr. Perfect, casually improved upon one of the all-time great vaunted Intercontinental title bouts. It was the best night of his career. It was the moment in which he became, even before the failure of the Lex Luger push, the rightful WWF champion.

It was the perfect time to get heat on him.

The “real” king of wrestling, Jerry Lawler, absolutely battered him. The taste of Memphis punches was frightening to those who watched at a young age.

Lawler was a fantastic stooge throughout the build to their “match” at SummerSlam, which was yet another fantastic piece of business at a time - 1993-1994 - when the WWF was on fire creatively.

The SummerSlam angle was a superb, astute glimpse of the real match at Survivor Series. It didn’t end up happening. Jerry Lawler got himself into bother.

The feud however resumed in 1995, so swings and roundabouts.