The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 Shawn Michaels Rivalries

Shawn Michaels is on the short list for best all-around professional wrestlers of all time—as a technician, as an aerial artist, as a brawler, as an innovator, as a talker, as a never-say-die face and as a brash heel, as an up-and-comer who demonstrated extraordinary potential and as a grizzled veteran. Indeed, it’s Michaels’ versatility as a performer, and an ability to be not only a jack of all trades, but also a master of just about all of them, that made him so special. He overcame his reputation as a politican and a douchebag backstage (at least during his initial run as a singles performer), to arrive as one of the most respected figures in the business.

Michaels had a long and highly decorated career, and along the way worked quite a few memorable programs. This week, I’m looking back at seven of the best of them, with considerations including storyline, heat, match quality, drawing power, and, as always, a healthy dose of my personal opinion.

024. Shawn Michaels vs. Diesel (In Your House 7… by ccu150

#7. Diesel

Throughout Shawn Michaels’ career, and particularly his initial ascent to the main event scene, the main knock on him was his size—billed at 6’1” and 225 pounds, and in all likelihood smaller than that. That size is fine to be a wrestler and as a tag team guy and a mid-card act. But as a main event guy? In a company that had risen to national dominance on the back of Hulk Hogan, and seemed in constant pursuit of another guy to fit that ripped powerhouse mold (e.g., Lex Luger, Diesel), what chance did a guy like Michaels really have?

And so, HBK’s WWF career became intertwined with that of Diesel for a three-year period. First, Diesel was Michaels’s “heater”—the big guy who was billed as his bodyguard and served as an imposing presence on the outside to help make Michaels believable as a threat, and help get the crowd more firmly against him. Before long, Diesel was less a sidekick than an equal as he won the Intercontinental Championship Michaels hadn’t been able to take off of Razor Ramon, and then Michaels and Diesel won their first set of tag titles together.

After a year and half working together, this partnership came to a close and the rivalry began, in the latest instance of Michaels accidentally nailing Diesel when he held somebody down for Michaels, and in Michaels’s ego boiling over and not apologizing. This all went down at Survivor Series 1994 and led to Diesel stalking Michaels away from the ringside area, and both men (and the team members who tried to cool them down) getting counted out to lose the match. From there, Diesel won the WWF Championship out of nowhere, squashing Bob Backlund. Michaels won the Royal Rumble to set himself on Diesel on a collision course for WrestleMania 11, in a classic former friends turned rivals, mentor vs. student scenario.

Critics have mixed opinions about the WrestleMania match. On the upside, it was undeniably the best bout of Diesel’s nearly year-long run, and the best bout of that year’s ‘Mania, neither of which we should brush aside. On the flip side, many have criticized Michaels for working a babyface style that got himself over at the expense of Diesel, rather than getting Diesel more over as the face champion. We can debate Michaels’ intentions, but in either case, the match was key in firmly getting him over as a main event level guy, setting up his face turn, and laying the foundation for Michaels to win the title at the following ‘Mania.

Michaels and Diesel would reprise their feud with Michaels as a face, Diesel as a turn-coat heel on Diesel’s way out the door from the WWF, in the aftermath of WrestleMania 12. They’d go head-to-head at In Your House: Good Friends, Better Enemies in a No DQ Match—another very good encounter between the two that further established Michaels as *the guy* at that point.

30-Minute Iron Man Match – Shawn Michaels vs… by BenoitRocks

#6. Kurt Angle

In a sense, Shawn Michaels and Kurt Angle represent opposite ends of the Attitude Era. Michaels helped usher it in with his sophomoric humor, the machinations of the Kliq, and the innovation of DX, but wound up out of action with a back injury just as the period really took flight. Angle entered the WWF as the Attitude Era was in full-swing and rose to main event status in its later stages, only to wind up as arguably the WWF’s greatest performer in the aftermath of that era. And then Michaels returned.

Angle and Michaels stayed apart for the most part on account of the brand split, with Michaels on Raw and Angle on Smackdown for an extended stretch. The rivalry that developed between the two represented the brand split at its best. The two were celebrated stars with a relatively organic reason never to cross paths because they happened to be on different shows, until Michaels eliminated Angle at the interpromotional Royal Rumble to spark a feud worthy of WrestleMania.

The build to WrestleMania was excellent for the two, featuring Angle attacking figures from Michaels’s past like Marty Jannetty and Sherri Martel. Angle would pick up the submission win at ‘Mania in what was certainly the best pure wrestling match of the show, before the two would revisit their issue at Vengeance after Angle got drafted to the Raw brand.

While Angle and Michaels would collide again in various tag and multi-man match situations, they ostensibly blew off their rivalry in a thirty-minute Iron Man match to open the Raw Homecoming special—a fitting conclusion in that it was yet another breath-taking back-and-forth match between the two, and because the issue still wasn’t really settled as they finished the contest knotted at two falls a piece. Michaels called out Angle to end it. Angle played his role perfectly in powdering out.

While it’s debatable whether Michaels or Angle was truly in his prime at this point (Angle may well have been; Michaels certainly was mentally, but probably not physically), this rivalry marks an unusual case in which WWE was able to deliver a legit dream match that lived up to the hype with two performers at their more or less peak powers. Each time they clashed, the matches were superb and a draw, and it’s unfortunate that Angle’s health caught up to him, which led to his departure to TNA, because otherwise you’d have to assume WWE would have gone to the well at least once more before HBK’s retirement, for one more classic.

SummerSlam 2002 – Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels… by Maxi_AguayoCopeland

#5. Triple H

Triple H and Shawn Michaels are famously backstage buddies from the Kliq days and beyond. By most accounts, much of their dynamic was defined by Michaels helping to bring Triple H along as a performer (both in terms of mentoring and political backing), while Triple H took care of Michaels, whose demons of substance abuse and ego were a regular threat to his well-being. The two were on-air allies, too, in the original iteration of Degeneration X, and in those very last reiterations of DX when the faction became a tag team of just the two men.

It’s quite arguable that the men’s real-life connection fostered them working together so well on screen, and arguable that there work together on screen set them up to thrive as opponents as well. From the summer of 2002 through spring 2004, the two feuded on and off in a heated main event level rivalry that delivered some terrific matches and consistently packed a wollop of heat.

The feud started when Michaels returned to an on-air, but non-wrestling role in WWE, joining the nWo—an alliance that only lasted a short while before Michaels seemed to ally with Triple H again, hinting at a reformed DX. The fix was in, though, as Triple H jumped Michaels that night, and then went one better in annihilating him outside the building at the following week’s Raw, putting his head through a car window (a nice homage to what newly heel Michaels did to Marty Jannetty years back—we’ll get to that). This set up Michaels to return to the right after a four-year-plus absence, during which he’d missed the meat of the Attitude Era, during which time Triple H had ascended to a top role. The two clashed in an unsanctioned fight at SummerSlam–an absolute classic which Micahels came from behind to win, only for Helmesley to take him down with a sledgehammer to extend their issue.

The next month, the surging Michales defeated Triple H and a field of four others in the very first (and still the best) Elimination Chamber Match at Survivor Series. The two clashed again in a Three Stages of Hell Street Fight into Steel Cage into Ladder Match. Given the stipulations and the men involved, the match wasn’t exactly going to be bad, but it also wasn’t very good—probably about as rough of a match as it could be under those circumstances, with a plodding pace, contrived spots, and never quite reaching that next gear—perhaps in part because having a cage match for the middle fall was awkward placement and made it difficult to really build. The two would continue to compete in various tag permutations as Michels spent a fair portion of the next year feuding with Evolution, only to culminate in this twosome locking horns for the title again at the Royal Rumble where they went to a draw in a (n unfortunately middling) Last Man Standing Match to set up the pair and Chris Benoit duking it out over the title at WrestleMania (an easy MOTYC) and a very good Backlash rematch.

Once Benoit entered the feud, it took a turn. While Triple H and Michaels still played enemies, they also co-represented the establishment at this point, and a certain sense of indignity at Benoit’s gall to rise up and challenge them at the top of the card—particularly so after Michaels, while staying face, heeled it up a bit for the rematch in front of a Canadian crowd that was still angry with him and all to eager to back their countryman, Benoit.

Helmesley and Michaels would be allies for the years to follow, after a DX reunion, but the alliance was often as not tinged by an undercurrent of competition between the two, which most clearly reared its head when they were pitted against one another and John Cena in a Triple Threat match for the world title, and later when Michaels played guest referee for The Game’s final bid to end The Streak, besides teasing dissension in the Daniel Bryan storyline before HBK more firmly aligned himself with his old buddy.

Michaels-Helmesley, like some of their high profile matches, went a little over-long, but had its moments, including the launch of their program and their Triple Threat bouts. The two were instantly credible, great workers and great talkers who successfully wove an epic story together over a period of years. I’m sure plenty of folks would nudge this rivalry higher on the countdown, but I had my number four pick just edging it out, and my top three set in stone.

#4. Marty Jannetty

Though Shawn Michaels’s name may not, today, be synonymous with Marty Jannetty’s, Jannetty’s does remain inextricably tied to his as “the other guy” from The Rockers who has become representative of a whole genre of wrestler—the half of a high-profile tag team who flounders after a split, while the other half soars.

It’s unfortunate Jannetty’s remembered this way, because was an excellent talent, arguably more or less on par with Michaels for years, before falling victim to substance abuse issues that meant, after over six years tagging with Michaels, Jannetty would never reach any higher than a few months of feuding with his ex-partner as HBK began his ascension to the top of the mid-card (which would, of course, lead to far greater heights).

While the feud did not mark a pinnacle for Michaels, that’s a lot to ask for in a career as decorated as his. Jannetty more than held up his end of the bargain for a vibrant feud toward the front end of Michaels’s singles career. It all started with the split of the team and HBK’s heel turn when he threw Jannetty through the window at the Barbershop interview set. Jannetty would be out of action, selling the injury, and then tied up in real-life legal proceedings for ten months to follow, but the delay made it all the more electrifying when he did return to TV and feuded for a few months, culminating in a very good Intercontinental Championship match at the Royal Rumble, after which Jannetty quietly disappeared from the WWF again.

Jannetty was back in the late spring, though, and rekindled the rivalry with a surprise return on Raw in which he finally did relieve Michaels of the IC title in arguably their best match. He’d drop the title back to Michaels within the month, on a house show, before sliding down the mid-card and in and out of the tag ranks while Michaels continued to shore up a higher spot on the card.

The stakes for Jannetty-Michaels were never as high as those for HBK-HHH (or a number of Michaels’ other top rivals for that matter). I give Jannetty the number four spot because this program—disjointed and strange as it could be at times due to Jannetty’s personal issues, was nonetheless the one to launch the HBK brand and set him on a course for greatness.

#3. Chris Jericho

Out of everything that Shawn Michaels did after coming back from his back injury and four year hiatus from wrestling, it may be his work opposite Chris Jericho that stands out the most.

In the build to WrestleMania 19, Michaels and Jericho got embroiled in a very good veteran-younger star rivalry, predicated on the ideas that Jericho had aspired to be Michaels in his youth, and that he had become, or perhaps exceeded, his idol. It appeared to be a clash of Jericho in his prime versus aged Michaels out for one last shot at glory. The match was excellent, Michaels won, and Jericho stayed true to his dickish heel character of the day in appearing to show Michaels respect when he shook his hand and hugged him afterward, only to nail him with a low blow.

If that’s all the Michaels-Jericho rivalry had been, it would probably still make the countdown, sneaking in at the number six or seven spot. But six years later the guys revisited the issue. This time, both were faces in a complex, well-rendered storyline in which Michaels retired Ric Flair, fellow face Batista took exception and targeted Michaels, and Jericho played go-between and investigative journalist, hosting the Highlight Reel talk show, and revealing theories about how he thought Michaels was manipulating Batista by feigning injury—theories that turned out to be largely on point.

After a slow, steady build, and after Batista ultimately got the best of Michaels, Jericho was waiting in the wings. I don’t know that there has ever been a feud better defined by PPV talk segments, or matches called by referee stoppage in WWE, but Michaels and Jericho just kept building the heat, trading brutal beatdowns with one another on TV and PPV without ever really giving us a decisive victor, including Jericho accidentally punching Michaels’ wife, only to follow up in heelish fashion by not being apologetic about it. As summer turned over into fall, Jericho found himself in possession of a world title, and so the title was at stake when these two blew off their issue in a Ladder Match at No Mercy—arguably the best bout the twosome assembled (no small feat) in which Jericho eked out the victory. (Yes, this was followed by the two fighting in a Last Man Standing Match on Raw and some more tag scenarios, but each was already transitioning to other stories by that point.)

The two would come back together one last time on opposite sides of a superstar tag clash—DX versus Jerishow, which headlined the very first TLC PPV in 2009, competing over the Unified Tag Team Championships. I consider this one a bit of a lost gem, overlooked because it was a on a B-PPV, the DX tag title run didn’t amount to much, and there’s a way in which hindsight suggests that the title change was designed to traded Jericho for The Miz in Big Show’s tag team, to free up Y2J for the world title scene again and give Miz a meaningful spot heading into WrestleMania season. Regardless, the bout was a nicely executed little car crash accented by moments of humor, and it was a fine coda to the Michaels-Jericho issue.

I fully understand folks who would want to push this rivalry higher, even up to the number one spot. For this top three, we’re entering rarefied air, and the kinds of rivalries that could each contend for spots on the top twenty WWE rivalries ever, period. Here’s where opinion weighs heavily. Jericho finishes at number three, and we’re on to number two…

#2. The Undertaker

A part of what I love about Michaels-‘Taker is that, if we were to have discussed it in the early 1990s, it would seem insane. The Undertaker was a main event monster, essentially from the moment the character debuted and wrought havoc over Dusty Rhodes’s team at Survivor Series 1990. Michaels was an undersized mid-card tag guy, who I don’t think anyone at the time suspected would ever accomplish more than a tag, or maybe IC title run.

Fast forward seven years, and Michaels was a multi-time world champion, and arguably more entrenched in the main event scene than The Undertaker at that time.

The two entered a feud in 1997 that was centered on the WWF Championship, though the title was not at stake between them. Michaels guest refereed arch-rival Bret Hart’s challenge to The Dead Man’s title at SummerSlam 1997, only to accidentally smash ‘Taker with a steel chair and inadvertently gift Hart the win. The Phenom was out for blood in the aftermath and stalked Michaels with such a vengeance that he felt compelled to gather the DX stable around him for protection. This all culminated in Michaels-‘Taker in Hell in a Cell—the original iteration of that gimmick match, and one of the very best. It looked as though The Dead Man would win, only to give way to the debut of his brother Kane to cost him the brutal bout.

While Michaels and ‘Taker would go at it again in a Casket Match at the Royal Rumble, their issue was realtively secondary at that point. Michaels was headed to WrestleMania to put over Steve Austin as the new top dog and The Undertaker was on a round-about collision course with his brother (who would cost him this match, too, against HBK). Unfortunately, this bout may be best remembered a spot gone wrong—a back drop onto the casket—that, more than anything, sent Michaels out of the business for four years to follow.

Upon Michaels’s return to wrestling, it didn’t appear he’d cross paths with The Undertaker in a meaningful way, and indeed they stayed clear of one another for over four years, until clashing in back-to-back Royal Rumbles—first as the final two, each clamoring for a title shot at WrestleMania, then as the first two in epic opening to the following year’s Rumble.

It would take another year before their issue would fully come to fruition, though—a veterans’ program at WrestleMania 25. The build was excellent, with Michaels out-mind-gaming The Dead Man. I expected the resulting match to be quite good, but what we got was an all-time classic of back-and-forth action that spanned styles and false finishes, both men working the crowd to perfection for one of the top five WrestleMania matches ever wrestled. Little could we have known they’d reprise their efforts a year later, with an even better build that saw Micahels desperate to challenge The Streak again, until he darn near lost his mind, cost ‘Taker the World Heavyweight Championship, and finally accepted The Dead Man’s deal that he’d retire if he couldn’t win at WrestleMania 26. I’m in the camp that was not as impressed with the ‘Mania sequel, but it was still a solid four-star outing and among the elite WrestleMania main events, not to mention a totally fitting conclusion to HBK’s in-ring career.

After stretching across over a decade and delivering three great, historically important bouts, Shawn Michaels vs. The Undertaker coasts into this number two spot, with only one rivalry ahead of it.

#1. Bret Hart

While, again, I can understand arguments for putting Chris Jericho or The Undertaker in this spot, for me, Hart-Michaels defines the pre- and early-Attitude Eras. Post-Hulkamania, the WWF went through an identity crisis, first embracing smaller performers as they dealt with the steroid trial and its fall out, then desperately grasping at Hulk Hogan replacements like Lex Luger and Diesel, before ultimately turning back to the smaller, better workers to carry forth a new product until Attitude and its oversized personalities, over its oversized bodies, would move to the fore.

Throughout those transitional times—a period conveniently bookended by Survivor Series 1992 and Survivor Series 1997, which they main evented in their first and last televised world title confrontations—Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels went to war both on-screen and off.

Hart became an on-air rivalry to Michaels before they broached the main event, first on opposing tag teams in the early 1990s—The Hart Foundation and The Rockers. Hart’s team was always a bit more established and enjoyed more title glory, but even then Michaels and Jannetty were nipping at their heels, even enjoying a phantom title win over the Foundation that never went to air because a busted ring rope resulted in a bad match and the WWF retconned the moment afterward.

Just as Hart had arrived on the WWF tag scene ahead of Michaels, he also graduated to a singles career over a year ahead of Michaels and had already won the Intercontinental Championship when Michaels turned heel and went into business for himself. Before long, Michaels was challenging Hart for the IC strap on the house show circuit, putting on terrific matches, which are sadly mostly lost to time, though they did include the WWF’s first Ladder Match, captured on Coliseum Home Video.

In the fall of 1992, Hart won his first WWF Championship. Soon after, Michaels won his first Intercontinental Championship. They almost immediately resumed their dynamic, with Hart thriving at a new level, and Michaels cast as the challenger who wasn’t quite ready for Hart when they worked their first main event, Michaels chasing the title at Survivor Series 1992.

Hart and Michaels would cross paths more casually in the months to follow, including Michaels filling in for Jerry Lawler in another Survivor Series confrontation (this time captaining opposite teams), but wouldn’t really, intentionally feud again for over three years. At this point, both men were faces and for the first time their relative positioning meant that Michaels would eclipse Hart, not only beating him, but beating him for his first WWF Championship in an Iron Man Match, and in the main event of a WrestleMania.

It was around this time that the animosity between the two boiled over from kayfabe into reality as professional jealousies, Vince McMahon’s whims, Hart taking himself very seriously, and Michaels unabashadely politicking and manipulating situations put the two at odds. Hart was purportedly penciled in to get his win back at WrestleMania 13, only for Michaels to “lose his smile” and sit out the show. That brief sabbatical aside, Hart and Michaels feuded indirectly or directly for most of Hart’s remaining time in the WWF, including the formation of the Hart Foundation and DX stables, and The Undertaker finding himself in the middle of their dispute with the world title on the line again come the summer of 1997. All of this led to Survivor Series 1997 and the Montreal Screw Job which I, and many other writers, have documented extensively, so I’ll leave that be for now.

Hart-Michaels produced great and innovative matches. It represented a paradigm shift as smaller guys got a chance on top. For all of the similarities Hart and Michaels shared, they also represented opposites in so man ways. Hart a traditionalist, a technician, a largely serious man on and off air. Michaels the more cutting edge, the more juvenile figure in both kayfabe and reality. The rivalry was so complex and so deep over such a long period of time that I have no reservations in placing it in the top five ever, anywhere in pro wrestling. And from where I’m sitting, it was a clear pick for the best of Michaels’s career (and Hart’s).

Which Shawn Michaels rivalries would you add to the list? My narrowest misses included Razor Ramon, Batista, John Cena, and Vince McMahon. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.