WWE: 10 Rivalries That Were Too Personal To Be Fake

1. Bret Hart And Shawn Michaels

This is the most publicized real rivalry in the history of WWE and nothing else is really close to it simply because this one happened at a main event level. Hart put over Michaels for the WWE Title at WrestleMania 12 in an Ironman Match, the longest match in WrestleMania history, and that's when the problems started. Michaels was defending the WWE Title everywhere in 1996 while Hart took over six months off. When Hart came back towards the end of the year, his thinking was that he would work with Michaels at WrestleMania 13 in a rematch from the year before. That didn't happen in part because Michaels claimed he was hurt ("I lost my smile") and the tension between the two was very real by that point. There were several instances where they continued to build their heat with one another with Hart suggesting that Michaels was gay for posing in Playgirl magazine and Michaels dropping the "Sunny days" reference to Bret's rumored affair with Sunny, which caused problems for the married Hart. They weren't even directly feuding on TV at the time, but their real life jealousy made it all feel real. That led to the backstage fight in Hartford on June 9, 1997. Apparently Hart won that battle as he yanked out a chunk of Shawn's hair and others broke it up before it could get very far. Michaels threatened to quit, but that didn't happen. They still worked together at SummerSlam when Michaels was special referee of Hart's WWE Title match against Undertaker. The big spot was when Michaels accidentally hit Undertaker in the head with a chair (he was going for Bret) that allowed Bret to win. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l03wbw66-yE Their match in Montreal at Survivor Series 1997 was one of the most famous matches ever as the Hart/Michaels feud made its way to television. By that point WWE wasn't shy about telling fans that these two really didn't like each other. Hart got screwed by Michaels and Vince McMahon, left WWE for over a decade and Michaels left as the WWE Champion. Hart spit in McMahon's face at ringside and then punched him out in the locker room. As most fans know by now, the relationship was repaired when Bret Hart returned to WWE in early 2010. The two former rivals embraced in the ring, they apologized for their actions and have become friends again. It's been covered in a WWE produced DVD where they sat down together with Jim Ross to go over everything. As entertaining as their matches were, imagine if they got along better in that 1996/1997 period? They would have had even better matches. For the sake of the business, let's hope that there's never a rivalry as serious as this one was in 1997. It may have made for great television, but it's not something that either man is proud of to this day whether they can admit it or not.