My Favorite Wrestling Feuds: Honorable Mentions (Part 2)

I'm not going to fight with anyone over this list. I had a difficult but enjoyable time selecting my Top Ten Favorite Wrestling Feuds, and it spilled over to include ten other feuds that I loved just not as much as my Top Ten Favorites. 

I've tried to include most of the wrestling promotions and draw from all of the eras that I was alive for. I haven't included anything from the 1970s or before because I wasn't alive then, and I'm less interested in what is, for me, wrestling pre-history, and more interested in the characters I grew up watching, as well as the characters currently making wrestling so much fun to experience. Some of these near-misses are going to people's absolutely favorite feuds, and I totally understand why people might shout at their computers "WHAT ON EARTH WAS BETTER THAN THAT?"

Well...wait a bit, I'll tell you.

15. Jake Roberts vs Randy Savage. Randy Savage had spent months as a WWE commentator after losing a retirement match to The Ultimate Warrior. Randy Savage was in the beginning of a potentially amazing feud with The Ultimate Warrior when Warrior was let go for extortion and general jackassery, so the WWE decided to have Jake Roberts, who people were desperate to see in the ring, as his promos from this era were creepy and incredible, goad Savage back into in-ring competition. Roberts's calling card was his giant Burmese Python, Damian. After matches, Jake would pull out his python, and it would crawl all over his terrified opponents. But, in 1991, Earthquake squashed the snake to death (in kayfabe, the wrestler did not really kill a snake) on TV, so Jake The Snake Roberts no longer had his reptilian buddy to torture his opponents. Enter, Motherfucker (his name was never said in the WWE for obvious reasons, but that was the snake's name), a de-venomized King Cobra that chewed on Savage's arm for an extremely uncomfortable amount of time. This attack, in addition to Jake Roberts slapping Savage's wife, Miss Elizabeth, across the face, fueled Savage's return to the ring. If this feud had gone a bit longer, or if the work Roberts did with Warrior had been transposed to his work with Savage, this would definitely have been a top ten feud.

14. Chris Jericho vs Dean Malenko. The cruiserweights in mid-1990s WCW were way more talented, athletic, and interesting to watch than Terrible Terry Five Moves and the rest of the main eventers with their awful wrestling and toothless storylines. Unfortunately, the cruiserweights rarely got amazing stories to tell. When Chris Jericho went heel in 1997, he became The Most Interesting Wrestler In The Promotion. His unmasking of Juventeud Guerrera was part of an incredible feud but his battle with Malenko was better. Malenko was The Man Of A Thousand Holds, so after Jericho soundly defeated him, he began cutting promos as The Man Of A Thousand And Four Holds, which was brilliant. He had dozens of fantastic promos insulting other wrestlers but they all included digs at Malenko, who took a break from wretling after his loss. Months later, Jericho held a Battle Royal to determnine his next opponent. Again, he insulted every wrestler as they entered the match. And at the end, the unmasked Guerrera found himself face to face with the completely forgettable masked cruiserweight wrestler, Ciclope. Clearly, it was time for Guerrera's revenge. And yet, Guerrera stood nose to nose with Ciclope, laughed, and then eliminated himself from the match. Jericho came down to further insult the winner, only for Ciclope to unmask and reveal himself as Dean Malenko. It is unsurprising that their matches after this incident were also fantastic. At the time, this was in my Top Ten Feuds Ever but I didn't want to repeat many wrestlers in my Top Ten list, and Jericho has had several fantastic feuds in the thirty years since his battles with Malenko, and there may be more in his future, as Jericho is still one of the most famous active wrestlers in the world.

13. Bret Hart vs Owen Hart. Bret Hart is acknowledged as one of the best wrestlers who ever lived. His catchphrase was even "I'm The Best There Is, The Best There Was, And The Best There Ever Will Be." His brother, Owen, also became one of the most decorated wrestlers of his era and, if not for his untimely death under the negligent watch of Vince McMahon and Vince Russo, he might have eventually eclipsed Bret's fame. While Bret was originally shown as the cool, level-headed champion of early to mid-90s wrestling, Owen was a whiny "nugget" who constantly cried about being overlooked in favor of his brother. As a feud of promos, this probably wouldn't have made my top twenty matches. But if we're going by pure wrestling, it would probably be in the very top stop. Every match between these two was gold. Forget the silly run-ins, the involvement of their stepbrother/Bret's former tag team partner, Jim Neidhart, and the involvement of all forty-thousand members of Bret and Owen's immediate family. All of those were fine, is a bit uninspired. The wrestling was Top Tier. Every battle between these two was a banger worth several rewatches

12. Rhea Ripley vs Liv Morgan. This feud is still happening. While I'm ready for it to be over, or at least put on hold for a bit, there's a solid possibility that this feud will get even better and crack the top ten. Rhea Ripley has been an absolute beast since her career began. People always cheered her whether she was the loveable underdog or the dastardly villain. When she became the Mami of The Judgement Day, her stock only rose. Everything she did was captivating. Liv Morgan, on the other hand, seemed pretty bland. Her matches were fine. Her stories were forgettable. She had a title reign where she beat Ronda Rousey twice, and both matches were pretty bad both athletically and narratively. When Rhea Ripley had to vacate her title due to a backstage attack by Live Morgan, I don't think anyone expected that it was the beginning of a fantastic feud. But Morgan took over not only as champion but as Dominik Mysterio's new love interest. When Ripley returned, Mysterio sided with Morgan, and they've been putting on mostly inredible matches. I was considering putting this somewhere in the top ten but their match at Bad Blood was terrible and had me wishing they'd both move on to new stories.

11. Bret Hart vs Shawn Michaels. You couldn't really tagline any of their matches with "This time, it's personal" because all of their matches seemed personal. These two had epic storyline after epic storyline, and some of the most iconic matches of all-time. They had the first ever Iron Man match, a sixty minute slog at Wrestlemania. They had the most controversial match of all time when Michaels beat Hart for the title in Hart's last real match in WWE. Dubbed The Montreal Screwjob, the match ending served as inspiration for hundreds of inferior matches ever since. If you're choosing Who Was The Best Technical Wrestler Who Was Also A Great Storyteller In The 90s, your answer has to be one of these two men. I don't think you can argue that one of them was the best and the other was almost the best but you can argue over which of them you prefer. So why isn't this in the Top Ten? I didn't want to repeat many people and Michaels has one feud that definitely tops this, despite how many promos Michaels did about Hart, years after Hart had left for another promotion. Even after Hart had been forced to retire due to injury, Michaels would make promos teasing Hart's return. These two superstars' genuine disrespect for each other made for some of the best wrestling TV of the 20th century. It's also great that they did eventually make up. Their interviews together in the last decade or so are just as entertaining to watch as their antagonistic promos were thirty years ago.