Storylines
Territory Era
The regional scene before national expansion — Memphis, World Class, Georgia, the AWA, and the pre-Hulkamania WWF.
The Fabulous Freebirds vs. The Von Erichs (Oct 1982 – May 1988)
Michael Hayes, Terry Gordy, and Buddy Roberts arrived in Dallas as the Von Erich family's friends and allies, until a Christmas night cage door slam turned them into the biggest villains in Texas. The six-year war that followed ran alongside the real tragedies overtaking the Von Erich family and became one of professional wrestling's most legendary regional rivalries.
Michael Hayes · Terry Gordy · Buddy Roberts · Kevin Von Erich · David Von Erich · Kerry Von Erich · Mike Von Erich
Jerry The King Lawler vs. Andy Kaufman (Oct 1981 – Jul 1983)
A Taxi star's act of wrestling women collided with Memphis's biggest attraction and produced a real hospital stay, a slap on Late Night with David Letterman that made the front page of the New York Times, and a secret that stayed kept until more than a decade after Kaufman died.
Jerry Lawler · Andy Kaufman · Jimmy Hart
Rowdy Roddy Piper vs. Greg The Hammer Valentine (Apr 1983 – Nov 1983)
Greg Valentine cracked Roddy Piper's ear open when he took the NWA United States title back in Greensboro, then spent the summer calling it the Year of the Ear. The two of them settled it at the first Starrcade, chained together by dog collars for sixteen minutes of real blood, and Piper came out of it with permanent hearing loss he carried for the rest of his life.
Roddy Piper · Greg Valentine
Golden Era
The national boom of the 1980s and early '90s — Hulkamania, Saturday night specials, and the last great NWA years.
Hulk Hogan vs. Macho Man Randy Savage (Oct 1987 – Apr 1989)
The partnership between Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage collapsed at WrestleMania V in one of the WWF's most carefully built storylines, driven by jealousy over Miss Elizabeth and the WWF Championship.
Hulk Hogan · Randy Savage · Miss Elizabeth
Rick The Model Martel vs. Jake The Snake Roberts (Oct 1990 – Mar 1991)
Rick Martel blinded Jake Roberts with his Arrogance cologne on live television, setting up a six-month feud that culminated in one of the most polarizing gimmick matches in WrestleMania history: the Blindfold Match at WrestleMania VII.
Jake Roberts · Rick Martel
Superfly Jimmy Snuka vs. The Magnificent Don Muraco (Jun 1983 – Dec 1983)
Jimmy Snuka chased Don Muraco's Intercontinental Championship through every major Northeast arena in the summer of 1983, lost the cage match at Madison Square Garden that October, and then splashed Muraco from the top of the cage in a dive that inspired Mick Foley to become a wrestler.
Jimmy Snuka · Don Muraco
Hulk Hogan vs. André the Giant (Jan 1987 – Aug 1988)
André the Giant turned on his friend Hulk Hogan and challenged him for the WWF Championship at WrestleMania III, in front of a WWF-announced 93,173 at the Pontiac Silverdome.
Hulk Hogan · André the Giant · Bobby Heenan
Macho Man Randy Savage vs. Ricky The Dragon Steamboat (Nov 1986 – Oct 1987)
Randy Savage drove a ring bell into Ricky Steamboat's throat. The revenge match, planned step by step on a yellow legal pad, became the match people remember from WrestleMania III. Steamboat held the title for 65 days.
Randy Savage · Ricky Steamboat · Miss Elizabeth · George Steele
Macho Man Randy Savage vs. The Ultimate Warrior (Oct 1990 – Mar 1991)
Randy Savage put his career on the line against the Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania VII and lost. Then Miss Elizabeth came over the rail and gave the story its real ending.
Randy Savage · Ultimate Warrior · Sensational Sherri · Miss Elizabeth
Macho Man Randy Savage vs. Jake The Snake Roberts (Aug 1991 – Feb 1992)
Jake Roberts crashed Randy Savage's wedding reception with a cobra in a gift box, had the real thing bite him on live TV, and slapped Miss Elizabeth. The feud drew death threats, upset Elizabeth's real family, and ended before its WrestleMania payoff.
Randy Savage · Jake Roberts · Miss Elizabeth · The Undertaker
Rowdy Roddy Piper vs. Superfly Jimmy Snuka (Mar 1984 – Mar 1985)
Roddy Piper smashed a coconut over Jimmy Snuka's head on Piper's Pit in 1984, starting a grudge that ran through the WWF's arenas all summer and fed into the main event of the first WrestleMania.
Roddy Piper · Jimmy Snuka
Hulk Hogan vs. The Iron Sheik (Dec 1983 – Jan 1984)
The Iron Sheik held the WWF Championship for less than a month as a transitional flag-waving heel before Hulk Hogan escaped the camel clutch at Madison Square Garden to win the title, launching Hulkamania and, by both men's later account, surviving a $100,000 bribe to break Hogan's leg instead.
Hulk Hogan · The Iron Sheik
Jake The Snake Roberts vs. The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase (Mar 1989 – Apr 1990)
Ted DiBiase, unable to buy or win the WWF Championship, unveiled his own self-made Million Dollar Championship and spent a year feuding with Jake Roberts, a program built around a kayfabe neck injury that kept Roberts off television during a real criminal case, a belt zipped into a bag with a live python, and Big Boss Man's face turn on refusing to be bought, before DiBiase won the belt back on a count-out at WrestleMania VI.
Jake Roberts · Ted DiBiase
Rick The Model Martel vs. Tito Santana (Apr 1989 – Nov 1990)
Rick Martel walked out on tag partner Tito Santana mid-match at WrestleMania V after an accidental forearm, ending Strike Force, and the two spent the next year and a half fighting on house shows, on Saturday Night's Main Event, in a King of the Ring final and at two Survivor Series while Martel became The Model, before Martel closed the rivalry with a clean Boston crab submission on The Main Event IV.
Rick Martel · Tito Santana
Mr. Perfect Curt Hennig vs. The Texas Tornado Kerry Von Erich (Aug 1990 – Feb 1991)
A parasailing accident cost Brutus Beefcake his SummerSlam 1990 title shot, and the spot went instead to Kerry Von Erich, wrestling on a secret prosthetic foot and privately telling friends he wanted to die, who beat Mr. Perfect for the WWF Intercontinental Championship anyway.
Kerry Von Erich · Curt Hennig
Hulk Hogan vs. Rowdy Roddy Piper (Jun 1984 – Mar 1985)
Roddy Piper's contempt for the WWF's new MTV-driven Rock 'n' Wrestling Connection escalated from talk-show insults into an assault on Cyndi Lauper, pulling in champion Hulk Hogan and building to the first WrestleMania, a closed-circuit show Vince McMahon called the biggest gamble of his career.
Hulk Hogan · Roddy Piper
Hulk Hogan vs. The Ultimate Warrior (Jan 1990 – Aug 1991)
Hulk Hogan handed the Ultimate Warrior the WWF Championship in the biggest torch-pass of the boom era at WrestleMania VI, then privately asked Vince McMahon if he could turn heel and take it right back.
Hulk Hogan · Ultimate Warrior · Mr. Perfect
Nature Boy Ric Flair vs. Ricky The Dragon Steamboat (Jan 1989 – May 1989)
Steamboat's surprise return to the NWA sparked a three-match series for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, at Chi-Town Rumble, Clash of the Champions VI, and WrestleWar, that Dave Meltzer rated five stars three times over, with a six-star house show in between.
Ric Flair · Ricky Steamboat · Terry Funk · Eddie Gilbert
Nature Boy Ric Flair vs. Terry Funk (May 1989 – Nov 1989)
Minutes after Ric Flair closed out his trilogy with Ricky Steamboat, ringside judge Terry Funk asked for a title shot, got turned down, and piledrove Flair through a table, opening a six-month war that ran through a plastic bag over Flair's head and closed with an I Quit match the Wrestling Observer named 1989's Feud of the Year.
Ric Flair · Terry Funk · Gary Hart · Sting · The Great Muta
Nature Boy Ric Flair and The Four Horsemen vs. The American Dream Dusty Rhodes (Sep 1985 – Jul 1987)
Ric Flair broke Dusty Rhodes' ankle at the Omni in September 1985, Rhodes answered with the Hard Times promo, and the two years that followed produced the Four Horsemen, a fourteen-day world title reign, a baseball bat in a parking lot, and the first WarGames match.
Ric Flair · Dusty Rhodes · Arn Anderson · Ole Anderson · Tully Blanchard · J.J. Dillon · Nikita Koloff · Magnum T.A. · Lex Luger
Hulk Hogan vs. Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff (Jul 1986 – Mar 1987)
Paul Orndorff spent a year as Hulk Hogan's tag partner, then piledrove him on television after Adrian Adonis spent weeks calling him "Hulk junior." Their title match filled Toronto's Exhibition Stadium with a then-record outdoor wrestling crowd, and the feud ended in a steel cage match that had to be restarted after two referees declared different winners.
Hulk Hogan · Paul Orndorff · Bobby Heenan · Adrian Adonis · Roddy Piper
Macho Man Randy Savage vs. Nature Boy Ric Flair (Jan 1992 – Nov 1992)
Ric Flair walked into the WWF with the NWA's real world title belt under his arm and, months later, doctored photographs claiming he'd had Miss Elizabeth before Randy Savage ever did. Savage's real marriage was already collapsing off camera, and the WWF built its WrestleMania VIII main event on top of it anyway.
Randy Savage · Ric Flair · Miss Elizabeth · Mr. Perfect · Bobby Heenan · Razor Ramon
The Ultimate Warrior vs. Ravishing Rick Rude (Jan 1989 – Aug 1990)
It started with a posedown and a steel bar, ran through two Intercontinental title changes and a WWF Championship cage match, and by the end, according to the referee who was there, Rick Rude was chasing the Ultimate Warrior into his limo for real.
Ultimate Warrior · Rick Rude · Bobby Heenan
Jake The Snake Roberts vs. Ravishing Rick Rude (Mar 1988 – Nov 1988)
Rick Rude picked a woman from the crowd for his post-match kiss who turned out to be Jake Roberts' real wife, then had her face airbrushed onto his tights. Roberts says he warned Rude not to wear them, and when Rude did anyway, tore them off for real. The two worked the angle across the summer of 1988 on TV and house shows before Roberts ended it with a DDT at Survivor Series.
Jake Roberts · Rick Rude · Cheryl Roberts · Bobby Heenan
New Generation
1993–1996 — smaller champions, leaner years, and the WWF rebuilding around Bret, Shawn, and the Undertaker.
Bret Hitman Hart vs. Shawn Michaels The Heartbreak Kid (Jul 1992 – Nov 1997)
A five-year rivalry between the WWF's two defining New Generation stars ended with Vince McMahon secretly ordering the bell rung on Bret Hart's own Sharpshooter, handing Shawn Michaels the WWF Championship without Hart's knowledge or submission in Hart's home country of Montreal, an incident that broke apart a real friendship, birthed the villainous Mr. McMahon character, and is still argued about by everyone involved.
Bret Hart · Shawn Michaels
Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Bret The Hitman Hart (Sep 1996 – Jul 1997)
A loudmouth who had just found Austin 3:16 called out a champion on sabbatical. Bret Hart came back, and over eight months the two built a program that ran through a Royal Rumble elimination nobody saw, a title lost to a chair shot, and a WrestleMania submission match where Austin bled, passed out, and left the bigger star.
Bret Hart · Steve Austin · Ken Shamrock · Sycho Sid
Bret The Hitman Hart vs. Owen Hart (Nov 1993 – Nov 1994)
Owen Hart got eliminated at Survivor Series because his brother stumbled into him, spent two months asking for a match he could not get, and then kicked Bret's leg out from under him at the Royal Rumble, starting a year that produced the best-remembered opening match in WrestleMania history and a five-star cage match with their parents at ringside.
Bret Hart · Owen Hart · Stu Hart · Helen Hart · Jim Neidhart · British Bulldog · Bob Backlund
The Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon (Sep 1993 – Aug 1995)
Shawn Michaels took his Intercontinental title home during a 1993 suspension and refused to send it back, so the WWF crowned a second champion and hung both belts over the ring at WrestleMania X. The ladder match that settled it was the first WWF match Dave Meltzer rated five stars, and the two men did it again in Pittsburgh eighteen months later.
Shawn Michaels · Razor Ramon · Diesel · The 1-2-3 Kid · Rick Martel · Jack Tunney · Dean Douglas
The Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels vs. Sycho Sid (Jul 1996 – Jan 1997)
Shawn Michaels spent his 1996 WWF Championship reign defending it against the same handful of opponents, until his one-time bodyguard turned attacker turned ally, Sycho Sid, chased off a rival at ringside and earned a title shot of his own. Sid beat Michaels for the belt in front of a Madison Square Garden crowd that booed the champion out of the building, and Michaels won it back two months later in San Antonio while running a fever, only to forfeit the title three weeks after that over a knee injury Bret Hart never believed was real.
Shawn Michaels · Sycho Sid · Vader · Ahmed Johnson · Jim Cornette · Owen Hart · British Bulldog · Bret Hart · Steve Austin
The Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels vs. The Undertaker (Aug 1997 – Oct 1997)
A SummerSlam chair shot meant for Bret Hart instead crashed into The Undertaker's skull, turning Shawn Michaels heel and igniting a rivalry that ran through a no-contest riot and a brass-knuckles brawl before landing on professional wrestling's first Hell in a Cell match. Kane tore the cell door off its hinges to end it, launching one of the most famous debuts in wrestling history and sending Michaels straight into the Montreal Screwjob five weeks later.
Shawn Michaels · The Undertaker · Kane · Paul Bearer · Triple H · Chyna · Rick Rude · Bret Hart · Mankind
The Hart Foundation vs. The United States (Mar 1997 – Nov 1997)
Bret Hart turned heel at WrestleMania 13, reunited his brother Owen and brother-in-law the British Bulldog, and built a pro-Canadian Hart Foundation around his own family. For eight months the group was booed in the United States and cheered in Canada, peaking at Canadian Stampede in Calgary, until Brian Pillman's death and the Montreal Screwjob, five weeks apart, ended it.
Bret Hart · Owen Hart · British Bulldog · Jim Neidhart · Brian Pillman · Steve Austin · Ken Shamrock
Yokozuna vs. Hulk Hogan vs. Bret Hitman Hart (Apr 1993 – Jun 1993)
Bret Hart lost the WWF Championship to salt in the eyes at WrestleMania IX, then watched Hulk Hogan answer an impromptu challenge and win the title in about 20 seconds. Hart says Hogan promised to return the favor and never did; Hogan said the plan was always to drop the belt back to Yokozuna. The argument outlived both men's careers, and Hogan himself.
Bret Hart · Hulk Hogan · Yokozuna · Mr. Fuji
Attitude Era
1997–2001 — the Monday Night Wars, Austin vs. McMahon, and wrestling's hottest, messiest period.
Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Mr. McMahon (Sep 1997 – Jul 1999)
A boss-versus-employee rivalry born out of Steve Austin's real neck injury and Vince McMahon's new on-screen villainy, escalating from a single Stone Cold Stunner into a year and a half of Corporation ambushes, rigged tournaments, and stipulation matches that defined the Attitude Era and turned around the WWF's fortunes against WCW.
Steve Austin · Vince McMahon
The New World Order vs. WCW (May 1996 – Dec 1996)
Scott Hall's shock walk-in from the crowd on Nitro, Kevin Nash's arrival two weeks later, and Hulk Hogan's heel turn at Bash at the Beach launched an invasion angle built on real WWF contract jumps, turning WCW's Monday night ratings around and igniting the New World Order's first chaotic year against the promotion it claimed to be taking over.
Hulk Hogan · Kevin Nash · Scott Hall · Randy Savage · Sting · Lex Luger
Sting vs. Hollywood Hogan (Sep 1996 – Feb 1998)
Eighteen months of Sting silently stalking the New World Order from the rafters built to Starrcade 1997's WCW World Heavyweight Championship match, a finish so botched by conflicting instructions and Hollywood Hogan's last-minute creative control that the title had to be vacated and settled two months later at SuperBrawl VIII.
Sting · Hulk Hogan · Randy Savage · Bret Hart · Lex Luger · Kevin Nash
The Undertaker vs. Mankind (Apr 1996 – Jun 1998)
Mick Foley debuted as Mankind by ambushing The Undertaker the night after WrestleMania XII, took Paul Bearer away from him inside a boiler room, and two years later took two falls off and through a sixteen-foot cage in Pittsburgh that reset what a WWF main event was allowed to look like.
The Undertaker · Mankind · Paul Bearer · Terry Funk · Kane
Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. The Rock (Dec 1997 – Mar 2003)
Austin beat him in five minutes over the Intercontinental title in 1997 and threw the belt in a river the next night. Six years later, on a night Austin had spent in a Seattle hospital, The Rock finally beat him at WrestleMania, and neither of them wrestled a full schedule again.
Steve Austin · The Rock · Vince McMahon · Shane McMahon · Mankind · Kurt Angle
The Rock vs. Mankind (Nov 1998 – Feb 1999)
Vince McMahon rang the bell on Mankind at Survivor Series to hand The Rock the WWF Championship, and the two of them spent the next three months trading it in a No DQ match on Raw, an empty arena during the Super Bowl, a ladder match and an I Quit match in Anaheim where Foley took eleven unprotected chair shots with his hands cuffed behind his back while his wife and children watched from the front row.
The Rock · Mankind · Vince McMahon · Shane McMahon · Steve Austin · The Big Show
D-Generation X vs. The Nation of Domination (Mar 1998 – Sep 1998)
Within a day of WrestleMania XIV, both factions changed hands: Triple H inherited D-Generation X from a retiring Shawn Michaels, and The Rock took The Nation of Domination from Faarooq. The rivalry between the two new leaders ran through a widely condemned blackface parody, a two-out-of-three-falls time-limit draw, a weapons-filled street fight, and a SummerSlam ladder match that made both men into main-eventers.
Triple H · The Rock · Chyna · X-Pac · Road Dogg · Billy Gunn · Mark Henry · D'Lo Brown · The Godfather · Owen Hart · Shawn Michaels
The Rock vs. Triple H (Jul 1998 – Jun 2000)
Dwayne Johnson and Paul Levesque spent two years trading the Intercontinental and WWF Championships across a ladder match, a strap match, a Fatal Four-Way, and a sixty-minute Iron Man match with Shawn Michaels as referee, a rivalry that grew out of real backstage friction between two ambitious young stars and ended with both of them running the company's next decade.
The Rock · Triple H · Chyna · Vince McMahon · Shawn Michaels · The Undertaker · Steve Austin
Goldberg vs. Hollywood Hogan (Sep 1997 – Jul 1998)
A former NFL lineman with a ten-month-old undefeated streak walked into the Georgia Dome, went through Scott Hall and then Hollywood Hogan in the same night, and won the WCW World Heavyweight Championship in front of 41,412 fans, a match WCW gave away on Nitro instead of saving it for pay-per-view.
Bill Goldberg · Hollywood Hogan · Scott Hall · Eric Bischoff
Goldberg vs. Kevin Nash (Nov 1998 – Jan 1999)
Kevin Nash won a 60-man battle royal to earn a WCW World Heavyweight Championship match against Goldberg, then beat him at Starrcade after Scott Hall hit him with a stun gun at ringside, ending a 173-match undefeated streak. Eight days later, with Goldberg written out of the rematch, Nash lay down for Hollywood Hogan and a finger poke.
Bill Goldberg · Kevin Nash · Scott Hall · Hollywood Hogan · Eric Bischoff
Bret Hitman Hart vs. Goldberg (Mar 1999 – Dec 1999)
Twelve days after winning the WCW World Tag Team Championship together, Bret Hart and Goldberg met for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship at Starrcade 1999. A kick that was supposed to miss caught Hart in the head, and the concussion that followed, compounded by more in the days after, ended his in-ring career within a year.
Bret Hart · Bill Goldberg · Roddy Piper
Diamond Dallas Page vs. Macho Man Randy Savage (Feb 1997 – Oct 1997)
Randy Savage joined the nWo and humiliated Diamond Dallas Page's wife on pay-per-view to start it, but the feud that followed became the story of a veteran handing a rising star his career: Savage chose to take the Diamond Cutter at Spring Stampede, and Page never stopped saying so.
Diamond Dallas Page · Randy Savage · Kimberly Page · Miss Elizabeth · Scott Hall
Raven vs. Tommy Dreamer (Jan 1995 – Jun 1997)
ECW built the rivalry on an invented summer-camp backstory and a Penthouse model who claimed Dreamer had spurned her as a teenager. For two and a half years Tommy Dreamer could not beat Raven one on one, until a Loser Leaves Town match in June 1997 sent Raven to WCW. Two years later they were tag team champions together.
Tommy Dreamer · Raven · Beulah McGillicutty · Stevie Richards
Sabu vs. Taz (Feb 1995 – Apr 1997)
Sabu and Taz won the ECW World Tag Team Championship together, then Sabu skipped a scheduled title match to take a better-paying date in Japan, and Paul Heyman legitimately fired him in front of the ECW Arena crowd. The real resentment Taz carried over it simmered for two years before ECW turned it into one of the two featured matches on the company's first pay-per-view.
Sabu · Taz · Paul Heyman
Rob Van Dam vs. Jerry Lynn (Mar 1999 – Sep 1999)
Rob Van Dam held the ECW World Television Championship for 700 days, and the challenger who got the most out of him was Jerry Lynn, a Minnesota journeyman let go by WCW. Their 1999 series ran from an overtime title match at Living Dangerously to a 27-minute bout at Hardcore Heaven that ECW used to launch its TNN show, and it kept going on national television that fall.
Rob Van Dam · Jerry Lynn
Ruthless Aggression
2002–2008 — the brand split, the class of 2002, and the last era before wrestling went PG.
Modern Era
2009 onward — reality-blurring promos, the Yes Movement, and storylines written by their audiences.