The Most Legendary WWE Feuds Of All Time

When it comes to professional wrestling in the United States, it doesn't really get any bigger than World Wrestling Entertainment. They have been at the forefront of this weird and wonderful business we've all come to know and love since the 1980s when the first WrestleMania took them from being the North East territory in a country filled with territories, to being the worldwide leader in sports entertainment. 

Since then, they have been able to tell some of the greatest stories ever conceived, filled with drama, suspense, and more soap opera ridiculousness than every Mexican telenovela ever made. We've seen weddings, funerals, coffins being stolen from funerals, Triple H making love to a corpse in a funeral home, and more. It really is an odd thing we watch every week, but above all, it's the second W in WWE that still stands out as the most important as the wrestling that happens in between the ropes is as celebrated now as it ever was. As the work rate of WWE Superstars goes up each year, the quality of matches should in theory be getting better every year, and given that Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter isn't as afraid to dish out the full five stars to WWE as he used to be goes to show how good some of the matches have been as of late.

With all that said, you can have a five star, 30 minute classic filled with more moves than a WWE 2K video game match being played by The Flash, but to make a match feel extra special, the feud that sets up the match needs to be extra special, and that's what we're here to talk about today. So sit back, relax, set up at least eight different monitors to cover all of the streaming services and TV channels you need to watch WWE these days, and join us on a journey through the archives of the biggest wrestling company in the world, as we talk about some of the most legendary feuds in WWE history.

Hulk Hogan had many rivals during the peak of Hulkamania in the 1980s. The likes of "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, Paul Orndorff, King Kong Bundy, and Andre The Giant all main evented WrestleMania against him, but failed to stop "The Hulkster" from running wild. While his match with Andre in particular is credited as being one of the biggest matches in wrestling history, it's the feud that happened a few years later that many see as the best of Hogan's peak of popularity in WWE.

If Hogan was the biggest star in the company, then "Macho Man" Randy Savage was probably the definitive number two in terms of popularity. With the beloved Miss Elizabeth by his side, Savage was not only a whirlwind of color and charisma on-screen, but he could also go out and have some of the best matches that WWE fans had seen at that time, just look at his WrestleMania 3 match with Ricky Steamboat as an example. Because of this, there was no way Savage was going to stay in the midcard for long, and his mega-popular persona led to him and Hogan forming The Mega Powers in 1988.

Much like some of the other best feuds in wrestling history, there is a distinct feeling that something is desperately wrong behind the scenes. In the case of The Mega Powers, Savage's paranoia about Hogan's feelings towards Elizabeth created resentment and hatred that would ultimately bleed into the on-screen product, and end up being the main reason why The Mega Powers exploded at the beginning of 1989.

"The Mega Powers Explodes" was the tagline for WrestleMania 5 in 1989, proving to everyone just how big of a deal this rivalry was at the time. It's not often that the unofficial name of the feud so-to-speak is enough to sell an event like WrestleMania to people, but that was the power over people that Hogan and Savage had at the time. At the end of a hard fought battle, it was Hogan who walked away as the new WWE Champion, putting an end to one of the first truly iconic WWE rivalries. Not only that, but in the years that followed, Hogan and Savage even patched up their real-life issues, and while they probably couldn't be considered the best of friends or anything like that, they were at least friendly enough to say that they were able to work together many more times in the future.

That future would of course come in WCW when Hogan joined the promotion in 1994, with the company immediately reuniting The Mega Powers five years after the story ended in typical WCW fashion. However, despite multiple reunions, breakups, and even working together with Miss Elizabeth as part of the New World Order, nothing ever came close to the hype and anticipation around their original story in the late 80s, a story that has been copied and parodied to death in the years since it originally took place.

One of the most infamous feuds to have ever taken place due to how it ended, but a feud that gave two men the platform to become main event stars, with both men becoming household names as a result of it.

The first meeting between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels came way back in the 1980s when the two men were young up-and-comers in the WWE tag team division. Hart was part of The Hart Foundation alongside Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart, while Michaels teamed up with Marty Jannetty as The Rockers, and the two teams would routinely face off on the house show. Over the years, it was Bret and Shawn who established themselves as the breakout stars, and in 1992 they would come into contact once again, this time one their own, feuding over the WWE Intercontinental Championship, and even introducing the Ladder match to the WWE audience.

Hart was the first to make it to the top of WWE, winning the WWE Championship in 1992 and even defending it against Michaels at that year's Survivor Series, an event that would become synonymous with the two men. However, in the wake of the steroid trial in the mid-1990s, WWE needed to lean into the slimmer, more athletic looking stars rather than the hulking beasts that had dominated the company throughout most of the 1980s, and both Hart and Michaels were the men tasked to do that. There was just one problem; by the time 1996 came around, the two men legitimately hated each other.

If there's anything that will make a wrestling feud feel more alive and vibrant, it's a little of bit of real life animosity, and in the case of Bret and Shawn, it wasn't a little bit, it was a lot. The ending of their WrestleMania 12 main event is a prime example of this, as Shawn reportedly told referee Earl Hebner "Tell him to get the f**k out of my ring, this is my moment," much to the dismay of Hart, and the tensions would only grow from there. After a 1996 that saw Shawn dominate WWE and become their top star, 1997 would be a constant back-and-forth struggle between egos as Bret thought Shawn was disrespectful, while Shawn thought Bret was arrogant. 

There were many backstage altercations, unscripted lines about supposed adultery, and a WrestleMania rematch that never came to be because of a lost smile, but then there was Survivor Series 1997. You all know about the Montreal Screwjob by now, and if you don't, there are a million videos and articles about it to get you up to speed, but for right now we'll say this; Shawn claimed to know nothing about the plan, while Bret had a sense something was off. Once Shawn locked Bret in the sharpshooter, the wrestling business changed forever. While not the absolute best feud from a TV standpoint, wrestling itself wouldn't be the same without the feud between Bret and Shawn.

One of, if not the most important feud in the history of WWE ended up being between a wrestler and the owner of the company, but the iconic rivalry between Stone Cold Steve Austin and Vince McMahon would be the catalyst for WWE to ascend back to the top of the wrestling mountain where they have stayed ever since. 

Beginning in September 1997, less than a month after Austin's career was almost ended after a botched sit-out piledriver by Owen Hart, "The Texas Rattlesnake" had been told by McMahon that he wasn't medically cleared to be physical with anyone due to his neck, which resulted in McMahon taking a Stunner for his troubles. This was really the prologue for the feud as the "Mr. McMahon" character wasn't officially born until after the aforementioned Montreal Screwjob, and Austin still had his feud with Shawn Michaels in early 1998 to go. However, once Austin won the WWE Championship and McMahon made it clear that he wasn't a fan of Austin's rebellious nature, they were off to the races.

From the Spring of 1998 onwards, Austin and McMahon were at each other's throats on a weekly basis in a storyline that struck a chord with virtually everyone wrestling fan who was watching at the time. 

Virtually everyone has had a job where they work for a boss that they absolutely hate. They don't get treated with the respect they think they deserve, they make barely enough money to get by, and they end up having at least one thought per week of taking their boss into a back alley somewhere and laying into them in a fashion that wouldn't look out of place in a mob movie. Austin personified every single person who has had thought. Unlike Hulk Hogan in the 1980s, Austin was seen as an "everyman," meaning that anyone who watched could genuinely project themselves onto Austin and imagine themselves in his shoes. On top of this, McMahon, for how deplorable he was in the role at times, was his own "everyman" as there are, unfortunately, way too many bosses who treat people terribly, meaning that for everyone who saw themselves in Austin, they could see the person they hated in McMahon.

That is largely the reason why their feud was so popular, why the moments they made together were so memorable, and why WWE went from being a number two behind WCW to once again reclaiming their crown as the industry leader because they struck a chord with the American population the likes of which they never had before. Their Steel Cage match at St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1999, Austin 3:16 says I just pi**ed my pants, the beer bath, filling the corvette with cement, Austin being the actual CEO of WWE, the list of memorable moments is endless. While they may have never had any five star classics, Austin and McMahon did more in their feud than anyone in WWE history.

Almost running side-by-side to the feud with Vince McMahon, Stone Cold Steve Austin was in another rivalry that ultimately grow bigger and bigger as the years went on. While McMahon was dealing with the aftermath of Survivor Series 1997 and telling the whole world that WWE had "Attitude," while also telling everyone that "Bret screwed Bret," Austin had won the WWE Intercontinental Championship and successfully defended it against The Rock, but decided he didn't want the title and threw it in a river, along with a number of The Rock's belongings. The two would regularly cross paths throughout 1998, but it wasn't until The Rock became "The Corporate Champion" when things really kicked into high gear.

The Corporation screwed Austin out of winning back the WWE Championship at Survivor Series 1998, but with McMahon wanting anyone but Austin as champion, The Rock was more than happy to do his bidding. This led to Austin spending the first quarter of 1999 trying to take down The Corporation and win back his crown, but when McMahon ended up winning the Royal Rumble in January, all hope was gone. However, McMahon said he wouldn't compete in the main event of WrestleMania, meaning the aforementioned Steel Cage match between Austin and McMahon took place, with Austin getting the win, leading to "The Great One" and "The Texas Rattlesnake" beginning their WrestleMania trilogy.

WrestleMania 15 in 1999 was the first of their three matches on WWE's grandest stage, and quite frankly, it saved the show from being the single worst WrestleMania of all time from an in-ring perspective. Right there was when people knew that these two men were going to be the biggest stars in the biggest era WWE had seen in years, and to solidify that fact, Rock and Austin's match at Backlash a month later was even better. As time went on, the fans were getting behind The Rock as much as Austin, making a feud between them feel impossible at the time, and after Austin took time away to finally rehab his neck, The Rock was the man to take his place as the face of WWE. 

When Austin came back at the end of 2000, Triple H tried to turn the two men against each other by convincing Rikishi to say that he ran him over for "The People's Champion." That didn't really work out too well, but Austin still harbored some ill will towards The Rock as the two would meet at WrestleMania 17 in 2001, in one of the greatest main events in the history of the show. It may have ended with Austin turning heel, but there was no doubt that the Houston fans witnessed history.

Finally wrapping up their feud in 2003 at WrestleMania 19 in a match truly fitting of the "end of an era" motto, "Hollywood" Rock defeated Austin in what would be "The Texas Rattlesnake's" final match of his career, and both were gone by 2004.

We've spoken a lot about how important WWE sees John Cena's feud with Randy Orton, and while it does have its moments, it's a feud that always felt a bit shoehorned into the position of "greatest WWE feud of all time." WWE were desperate for Cena to have his perfect opponent like Bret did with Shawn, or Austin did with The Rock, and Cena would find that man eventually, it just took WWE to stop looking for him for them to find him.

By 2011, CM Punk had reached his wits end with WWE, and all of wrestling pretty much and was ready to either take his talents elsewhere (which if he did, the NJPW boom that began in 2012 would have been even bigger than it became), or take matters into his own hands and jolt a wave of energy into WWE the likes of which the company hadn't had since the aforementioned Stone Cold Steve Austin. He told the world he would be taking Cena's WWE Championship away from him at Money in the Bank 2011, and taking it home for good as his contract was expiring. From there, he would drop his infamous "Pipebomb" promo, send shockwaves through the world of professional wrestling, and at the pay-per-view, which took place in his hometown of Chicago, Punk won and ran through the back door with the richest prize in sports entertainment.

The two men would routinely come into contact over the next two years, and they were almost the perfect opponents for each other, a Ying Yang situation where there was enough good in the heel, and enough bad in the babyface for it to work. Cena had become the undisputed face of WWE in an era where the company had fully rested on their laurels. He was granting wishes to kids as if he was a modern day Superman, was preaching Hustle, Loyalty, and Respect on a weekly basis, but had been through enough battles in his time that people knew he had a vicious streak to him. As for Punk, he was the rebel raging against the machine, marching to the sound of his own drum, but had a love for the business that made him one of the most relatable characters in WWE history.

Aside from their 2025 rivalry, which would have been a lot better had Cena just been a babyface the entire time, every time Cena and Punk got in the ring together, they brought the best out of each other. Their Money in the Bank 2011 classic is one of the greatest matches in WWE history, their match at Night of Champions 2012 is almost at that same level, and their last singles match for 12 years on "WWE Raw" in February 2013 is as good as it gets when it comes to getting top quality wrestling on free TV. Two of the best to ever do it, trying to be the best at what they do.