The Most Legendary 90s Wrestling Feuds Of All Time

The 1990s were glorious times for many people. It was the decade where the world gradually made the transition from analogue to digital, with the internet becoming more and more prominent as the years went by. Many would argue that the world of music and movies were at their most creative, with bands like Oasis and Blur making Rock 'N' Roll cool again in the United Kingdom, Eurodance getting people up and moving like never before, and the United States doing something that seems inconceivable to those who weren't around at the time; making it socially acceptable to say the words "I like Limp Bizkit."

With that said, there might not be any other medium of entertainment that went through more of a change than professional wrestling. At the start of the decade, companies like WWE and WCW were still deep in the mindset of catering to families with outlandish, over-the-top gimmicks that only a child would fully be entertained by. However, by the end of 1999, wrestling had become edgier than ever before, and most importantly, more popular than it had been in years.

For example, WWE were walking a fine line between relevancy and bankruptcy by 1995. The infamous steroid trial might have seen Vince McMahon come out on top of the US government, but the reputation of both his company and wrestling in the United States had been badly tarnished. So when WCW decided to enter the world of weekly prime time television with "WCW Nitro," the "Monday Night Wars" saw WWE become the number two company in the US for the first time in decades. McMahon knew he had to change a few things, and after taking some inspiration from Paul Heyman and Extreme Championship Wrestling, the "Attitude Era" changed the way people watched wrestling in North America forever, saving WWE in the process.

Outside of North America, a falling out in the CMLL hierarchy led to the formation of AAA down in Mexico, and in Japan, both New Japan Pro Wrestling and All Japan Pro Wrestling were putting on matches that are still heralded as some of the greatest of all time.

As we all know, matches aren't everything in wrestling as a good story will turn a good match into a great one, and a great story into an all-time classic match. During the 1990s, not only were there some absolutely brilliant feuds and rivalries, but some of the most important as a select few changed the entire business for both good and bad reasons. That's what we're here to talk about today, so sit back, relax, and join me on a journey to a time of dial-up internet, Nu-Metal music, and fantastic wrestling stories as we take a look at some of the most legendary wrestling feuds from the 1990s.

The old saying "blood is thicker than water" is something people use to describe their family bonds, and no matter how close you might be to some of your friends, it's the connection you have to your family that is stronger than anything. It's this idea that often leads to feuds between family members feeling a lot more volatile than others as their is such a deep bond between the two people involved, and in wrestling, it's even more intense.

At Survivor Series 1993, Bret and Owen Hart were on the winning team in their traditional Survivor Series Elimination match against Shawn Michaels and his Knights (Michaels was standing in for Jerry Lawler who was feuding with Bret at the time, but was pulled from the card due to sexual assault allegations coming to light). However, a miscommunication saw Owen eliminated from the match, making him the only member of his team to be eliminated. After the match, Owen confronted Bret, but things were quickly settled down on the night. However, Owen would start baiting Bret into accepting a match with him, but Bret wouldn't budge and the two men reconciled by the end of 1993.

1994 was a completely different story as the reunion was short-lived when Bret suffered a knee injury in a WWE Tag Team Championship match against The Quebecers at the Royal Rumble. Fed up with his older brother letting him down, Owen snapped after the match was called off and attacked the injured knee, but Bret was only injured in kayfabe and ended up being a joint winner of the Royal Rumble match later that same night, guaranteeing himself a WWE Championship match at WrestleMania 10 in the process. Owen thought Bret was selfish and held him down, but thanks to the stipulation that Bret would have to wrestle twice at WrestleMania 10 due to being a co-winner of the Royal Rumble alongside Lex Luger, Owen would finally get the match he had wanted for months.

Bret and Owen's match at WrestleMania 10 is up there as not just one of the greatest opening matches in WrestleMania history, but one of the best matches in the history of the event full stop. "The Hitman" was one to get the victory, and went on to win the WWE Championship from Yokozuna at the end of the night, but Owen wasn't done with his brother. Throughout the summer, he would try and find ways to get near Bret in any way possible, and found his opening in the form of the 1994 King of the Ring tournament (which Bret won a year earlier). Owen would get a shot at Bret and the WWE Championship at SummerSlam, this time in a Steel Cage match, where the two brothers went to war for over 30 minutes with Bret eventually retaining his title. The feud would continue into the spring of 1995 with Bret proving to his little brother that he was the better man.

It's time to take a trip down the King's Road as one of All Japan Pro Wrestling's biggest rivalries gets a spotlight. By the time the 1990s rolled around, AJPW booker Giant Baba wanted to take the company in a new direction and create new stars by focusing on younger talent that could carry the company through the next decade. Naturally, established names like Jumbo Tsuruta and Genichiro Tenryu weren't best pleased with this idea as they had been two of the biggest names in the company for many years. Of the stars that Baba had his eye on, four men stood above the rest; Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, Akira Taue, and Toshiaki Kawada, better known by fans these days as "The Four Pillars of Heaven."

While all four men would do battle with each other at various points throughout the 1990s, it was Misawa and Kawada who had the deepest connection. They actually went to the same high school and were on the same wrestling team growing up, with both men having aspirations of leaving school and becoming professional wrestlers. Misawa was the first to do so as he was a year older than Kawada, something that would become a common theme throughout their feud, and after perfecting his junior heavyweight style in Mexico, he became Tiger Mask II in 1984, spending six years under a mask while dropping the jaws of everyone who saw him perform.

Kawada on the other hand had to fight a lot harder for his chances in AJPW. His foreign excursion took him to Stampede Wrestling in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, before returning to sit under the learning tree of the aforementioned Tenryu, which would help him get used to the main event scene, but he was always seen as the whipping boy for those a little more experienced than him. When Tenryu left AJPW in 1990, he joined forces with Misawa, even being the one to help Misawa shed the Tiger Mask gimmick in 1990, with the two men forming the Super Generation Army along with Kobashi to take on Tsuruta-gun, led by Jumbo Tsuruta who was focused on one thing; keeping his spot in the company.

However, as time went on, it was clear that Misawa was always the favorite in the eyes of the fans, and in the mind of Giant Baba. No matter how well Kawada performed, it was Misawa who got the big matches and title opportunities, causing Kawada to abandon Misawa and form the Holy Demon Army with Akira Taue. From there, Kawada embraced his "Dangerous K" nickname, and spent the rest of the decade tormenting Misawa by improving so much that he would eventually start getting big singles wins, while also preventing Misawa and Kobashi from winning tag gold alongside Taue.

From the high school wrestling mat to the main event of the Nippon Budokan, Misawa and Kawada's rivalry is essential viewing and one of the greatest in the history of Japanese wrestling.

It was mentioned in the introduction but it bares repeating, arguably no company during the 1990s influenced the landscape of wrestling in North America more than Extreme Championship Wrestling.

Plagued by financial issues since the day it was formed, ECW went from being an NWA affiliated independent promotion to the third biggest company in the country by the end of 1999 for being a melting pot of high quality wrestling, wince inducing violence, and soap opera storytelling that was unmatched at the time. We could have listed a number of legendary ECW feuds for this entry, such as the war that Rob Van Dam and Jerry Lynn had over the ECW World Television Championship, Mike Awesome and Masato Tanaka doing their best to kill each other over via the medium of chair shots and tables, and both of the feuds The Sandman had with Tommy Dreamer and Raven. However, it's the feud between Dreamer and Raven that stands the test of time.

The story was based off the idea that Dreamer and Raven had actually gone to the same summer camp when they were teenagers, but they were two very different people back then. Dreamer was the jock who was not only popular with everyone, but bullied the outsiders, with one of those outsiders being Raven. Years later, Raven, who was already a tortured character that somehow got no sympathy from the crowd because of how he took out his frustrations out on people, came into ECW to get revenge on Dreamer, who had won over the fans as a beloved everyman. 

Raven pulled out every trick in the book to get the better of Dreamer. He got his own stable, "Raven's Nest," which comprised of The Blue Meanie, Stevie Richards, and eventually Beulah McGillicutty, a girl who was also at the same summer camp as Dreamer and Raven, but despite having a crush on Dreamer, he completely blanked her due to being overweight. The Harris Brothers, Brian Lee, Louis Spicolli and more were drafted in to help keep Dreamer down, and while "The Innovator of Violence" was able to get the better of his lackies, Dreamer could never get the decisive pin on Raven.

That didn't stop Dreamer from getting some moral victories along the way. Beulah would turn on Raven after getting pregnant with Dreamer's baby, the first-ever lesbian angle in ECW came when Beulah was revealed to be cheating on Dreamer with Kimona Wanalaya, only for Dreamer to bag both girls, and the chair shot heard around the world is still one of the most iconic clips in the history of ECW. Even the end of the first ECW pay-per-view, Barely Legal 1997, saw Dreamer help Terry Funk dethrone Raven to become the ECW World Heavyweight Champion. It was shortly after Barely Legal where Dreamer finally got the big win over Raven in what would be Raven's final match for the company before leaving for WCW, capping off a near three year story.

WCW are known for many things, and one of them is their legendary 83 week run where "WCW Monday Nitro" defeated "WWE Raw" in the TV ratings every single week. The success of "Nitro" in the first few years of its existence is due to Eric Bischoff designing the show to effectively be the opposite of what "Raw" was. If "Raw" was taped, "Nitro" was live. If "Raw" focused on meaningless squash matches, "Nitro" would have a marquee match every single week, and if "Raw" primarily focused on characters that wouldn't look out of place in a cartoon, "Nitro" was gritty, real, and arguably more raw than their competitors could ever be.

The other main reason why "Nitro" succeeded so much at the time was the New World Order. Formed in the main event of Bash at the Beach 1996, Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall, and Kevin Nash took over WCW within the span of just a few months, and the nWo was without a doubt the coolest thing in wrestling at the time, despite the fact that they were heels. Given that they were just too cool (or too sweet depending on who you ask) to boo, it would have to take a special type of babyface to gain any sympathy when facing off against the nWo, and fortunately for WCW, they had that someone lurking in the rafters.

Throughout the early stages of the nWo, the one man they wanted to recruit was Sting. "The Icon" was Mr. WCW to a lot of people, so the thought of him going bad and joining forces with the nWo seemed inconceivable. However, after many attempts to bring Sting in, Sting decided to take himself away from WCW programming with the notion that the only thing certain about him was that nothing was certain. Over time, Sting would transform into his now legendary crow character, inspired by Brandon Lee's portrayal of "The Crow" in the movie of the same name.

Sting became the ultimate thorn in the side of the nWo, routinely dropping from the rafters to make the save for the babyfaces before handing his trademark baseball bat to whoever he had just saved to see if they were loyal to WCW, and loyal to the cause of taking down the nWo. This rivalry was the key selling point of WCW in 1997, and everyone knew that at some point a showdown between Sting and Hogan would have to happen.

That showdown took place at Starrcade 1997, the most successful WCW pay-per-view from a financial point of view, but the match was not the grand crescendo that WCW had hoped for. Multiple stories have surfaced as to why Sting's victory over Hogan went as bad as it did, with things like creative control, and fast counting referees, and Sting not being physically up for the match all being thrown around. With all that said, the road to Starrcade 1997 was truly a thing of beauty.

The biggest wrestling feud of the 1990s ended up being between a man who was wrestling on borrowed time after breaking his neck, and a man who wasn't even a wrestler. With that said, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Vince McMahon made magic together during the WWE's Attitude Era, and the company wouldn't be where it is today without this feud.

What made this feud so important and special at the time was its relatability. Everyone has worked in some sort of job where they hated their boss to the point where they wanted to beat them up without the risk of getting fired. So when the tired, angsty, blue collar workers of the 1990s saw "The Texas Rattlesnake" making Mr. McMahon's life miserable on a weekly basis, those people were living their fantasies through Steve Austin, and the feud caught fire because of it.

The fuse was originally lit in 1997 shortly after Austin had his neck accidentally broken by Owen Hart at that year's SummerSlam pay-per-view, but things really kicked into high gear once Austin dethroned Shawn Michaels to become the WWE Champion at WrestleMania 14. McMahon made it extremely clear that he wasn't a fan of Austin and how he conducted himself, being seen as bad for business and a bad influence on the rest of the company, which only made him more appealing to the fans. When Austin kept on marching to the sound of his own drum, McMahon would try every trick in the book to bring Austin down, leading to some of the most memorable moments in WWE history when those schemes inevitably backfired on McMahon.

Austin filling McMahon's Corvette with cement, the legendary beer bath shortly before WrestleMania 15, McMahon being attacked in the hospital, "Austin 3:16 says I just p**sed my pants," the Steel Cage match at St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1999 that saw McMahon take one of the most insane bumps of the Attitude Era. This entry could literally be a list of those moments until we ran out of things to say, but all of these moments proved to be more important than the last when it came to the overall landscape of American wrestling.

The feud between Austin and McMahon was the main thing that swung the momentum of the Monday Night Wars back in WWE's favor. WCW's 83 week winning streak came to an end in April 1998 when WWE had an entire episode of "WWE Raw" built on the idea that Austin was actually going to wrestle McMahon one-on-one, that's how big this feud was at its peak. By the end of 1998, "Raw" was the number one wrestling show on prime time television and they were never beaten by "WCW Nitro" again, with Austin and McMahon being the main selling points of the show. Historically significant, infinitely entertaining, and absolutely insane at times, Stone Cold Steve Austin versus Vince McMahon is the quintessential wrestling feud of the 1990s.