Shawn Michaels' career was equal parts excellent and nonsense and so we made a list to represent that. These are the 10 greatest rivals of Shawn Michaels' career.
00:00 - Start
01:05 - 10
02:06 - 9
03:00 - 8
03:59 - 7
05:00 - 6
06:09 - 5
07:07 - 4
08:08 - 3
09:17 - 2
10:17 - 1
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00:00 - Start
01:05 - 10
02:06 - 9
03:00 - 8
03:59 - 7
05:00 - 6
06:09 - 5
07:07 - 4
08:08 - 3
09:17 - 2
10:17 - 1
SUBSCRIBE TO partsFUNknown: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsfunknown
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsfunknown/
Buy wrestling merchandise here: https://www.wrestleshop.com/
Read more Feature content here on WrestleTalk.com: https://wrestletalk.com/features/
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SportsTranscript
00:00 He thinks he's cute, he knows he's sexy, he's got the book, and it drives NXT wild.
00:07 Yeah, Shawn Michaels NXT has been equal parts excellent matches and utter nonsense as seen
00:12 by Dijak whipping a tree.
00:14 But that makes sense considering who is putting these shows together.
00:18 Michael Shawn Hickenbottom is considered by many to be the greatest wrestler of all time,
00:22 and over the course of his over two decade long career, he had more than his fair share
00:27 of excellent matches and utter nonsense.
00:30 And loads of people to share them with.
00:33 HB Schizzle is the focus of this month's greatest rivalries list, a list that promises
00:37 to be both excellent and utter nonsense, just like Shawn Michaels himself.
00:42 I'm Tempest Haling from PartsFunKnown, and these are the ten greatest rivals of Shawn
00:46 Michaels' career.
00:47 But before we get on with this list, please make sure that you like this video, subscribe,
00:50 and enable notifications to always on so you never miss a fun list just like it, and make
00:54 sure you check out the plethora of other greatest rivals lists that we have done on this channel.
00:58 We've done Kenny Omega, John Cena, The Undertaker Triple H, Chris Jericho, there's loads to
01:03 choose from, so check 'em out.
01:05 Number ten, Mankind.
01:07 Not one of Shawn Michaels' most famous rivals, but anyone who has seen In Your House Mind
01:12 Games will know that Mankind belongs on this list.
01:15 Hell, their main event is the only reason anyone would ever remember that Mind Games
01:18 even happened.
01:19 I'm sure as hell isn't Goldust vs. The Undertaker, or Jim Cornette vs. Jose Lothario.
01:24 Mick Foley offered a completely new challenge to babyface world champion Shawn Michaels
01:28 than he had faced previously, coming right off his Summerslam rivalry with Vader, who
01:33 had offered Shawn the challenge of actually punching him in the face.
01:36 Mankind was a psychological villain, and an incredibly creative mind when it came to not
01:40 only the construction of a rivalry, but of a match, leading to what he called the best
01:44 match of his career for quite some time with Shawn at Mind Games.
01:48 A four and three quarter star match deep in mid-90s WWF was not common, but you put two
01:53 of the all-time greats in the ring together, and that is precisely what you get.
01:57 If it weren't the mid-90s and the WWF, there probably wouldn't have been a sh*t DQ finish
02:02 to be the one negative footnote on an otherwise classic rivalry.
02:06 Number nine, Ric Flair.
02:08 In the alternate universe where Ric Flair had his last match in 2008, and not in 2022,
02:13 he and Michaels' rivalry would rank even higher on their list.
02:16 And we live in this universe, with 73-year-old Ric Flair bleeding buckets 14 years after
02:21 he and Shawn had one of the most emotional retirement matches of all time at WrestleMania
02:26 24, so this will go right here.
02:28 Shawn Michaels' 2008 holds a near and dear place in my heart for reasons we'll get
02:32 to later, but all of the stories that spawned throughout the year for HBK started with his
02:36 WrestleMania rivalry with The Nature Boy.
02:39 There are so many things that could be brought up for this.
02:42 Flair's old yeller promo, "I'm sorry, I love you," the grandeur of the match,
02:46 it's these things that linked Flair and Michaels even since Flair broke his retirement.
02:51 And, on a somewhat separate note, these two had another great match at Bad Blood 2003.
02:57 Not even a fraction as legendary, but just as worthy a watch.
03:00 Number eight, John Cena.
03:02 This is a rivalry that meant a lot more to the career of John Cena than it did Shawn
03:06 Michaels.
03:07 Check out our John Cena's Greatest Rivals list to see just how much more, but for Shawn,
03:11 it represented probably the most high-profile rivalry he had during his second go-around
03:16 in the Fed.
03:17 It doesn't get much more high-profile than the main event of the biggest WrestleMania
03:20 to date over the WWE Championship against the biggest star in the company, after all.
03:25 You probably wouldn't expect John Cena circa 2007 to be one of Shawn Michaels' best in-ring
03:31 rivals, but somehow that was the case.
03:33 Whether it be a half-hour WrestleMania classic or a full-hour Raw/Broadway in England, or
03:38 one of the best four waves with Edge and Randy Orton at Backlash, or even a super underrated
03:43 Raw match in January of 2009, Big Match John and Big Match Shawn lived up to their names
03:48 every time they got in the ring together.
03:50 It may have meant more in the grand scheme of Cena's career, but this rivalry is a
03:54 huge reason why HB Schizzle's second WWE tenure is so highly regarded.
03:59 Number seven, Marty Jannetty.
04:01 After nearly seven straight years of hard liquor, booger sugar, travel, and classic
04:05 matches, the Rockers had what some might call a rocky relationship.
04:09 Enough bumps will do that to a team, and I ain't talking about flatbacks.
04:13 Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels' legacy as a tag team has grown to legendary status
04:17 as one of the most influential teams of their era, in many ways starting the lineage of
04:22 the Rockers to the Hardys to the Young Bucks that still fell today.
04:25 Their work was tremendous, and their year-long feud with Buddy Rose and Doug Summers from
04:29 the AWA was long listed for this video, but their work as rivals is what lands Marty a
04:34 deserving spot.
04:35 The barbershop is the tag team breakup all others are measured against, and the ensuing
04:39 matches the two had on Raw over the Intercontinental Championship were some of the best the show
04:43 had in its inaugural season.
04:46 No one else was wrestling like the Rockers at the time, and it shows.
04:49 Personally, my favorite part of all this is any time both Rockers were in the ring together
04:53 in any Royal Rumble match, that shit was on sight.
04:57 Real rivals.
04:58 We need more like that.
05:00 Number six, Kurt Angle.
05:02 For my money, no one has ever had a better WrestleMania match with Shawn Michaels than
05:07 Kurt Angle.
05:09 Including some folks yet to show up on this list.
05:11 Sexy Kurts and everything aside for a moment, Kurt Angle and Shawn Michaels had an incredibly
05:16 simple story going into WrestleMania 21.
05:18 Who is the best wrestler?
05:20 A question asked in the wrestling fandom every day, asked by the two best wrestlers in WWE
05:26 at the time.
05:27 And what resulted was a match worthy of two men being asked that question of.
05:31 If you have seen my list of 10 favorite WWE matches ever, you'll know that match is
05:35 number one.
05:36 It's f***ing perfect, and I love it dearly.
05:39 But what doesn't get mentioned nearly enough are the other matches these two had throughout
05:43 2005.
05:44 Their match at Vengeance is a worthy sequel, and their 30-minute Iron Man match in October
05:49 is a fitting conclusion to a near-year-long rivalry.
05:52 They weren't linked to each other week in and week out all year, but they continued
05:56 to be drawn back to one another by the simple question of who is better.
06:00 Crazy Kurt and Sexy Shawn were the perfect entertainers to add some humor to things to
06:04 keep things spicy, but this is a perfect example of the simplest stories being the best ones.
06:09 5.
06:10 Triple H At its peak, Triple H and Shawn Michaels wrestling
06:13 one another was peak pro wrestling soap opera drama, as seen at SummerSlam 2002.
06:18 But at its worst, it was horribly self-indulgent, as seen with their 47-minute Hell in a Cell
06:24 match at Bad Blood 2004.
06:26 It is impossible to ignore the history between the two men, probably the most intertwined
06:30 pair on this list, and it is that history, and their greatest moments, that overshadow
06:35 any of their weaker moments.
06:37 Shawn has said that there was no one else that he would have felt comfortable having
06:41 his return match with in 2002, which tells you all you need to know about the connection
06:45 between them.
06:46 I do always think of Trips and Shawn as partners these days, maybe because I've seen five
06:51 too many DX reunions, but that doesn't change the fact that this was the rivalry that was
06:55 the focus of Raw for nearly two years.
06:57 And personally, I just love the match they had on the last Raw of 2003, even with its
07:02 dusty finish.
07:03 Just thought I'd throw that in there because you should watch it if you haven't already.
07:07 4.
07:08 Razor Ramon Ain't nobody f***ing with the clique, clique,
07:11 clique, clique, clique.
07:13 Ain't nobody fresher than the motherf***er clique, clique, clique, clique, clique.
07:19 That's right, they didn't do it like the clique in the 90s, and in 1994, the two most high-profile
07:24 members of the group were Shawn Michaels and Scott Hall.
07:28 Friends since years prior, the two brought that real-life chemistry to the ring and made
07:32 history.
07:33 Not only did they have the trend-setting ladder match at WrestleMania X, but they also had
07:37 another one.
07:38 The rematch at Summerslam 1995 that some would argue is the superior match of the two, with
07:43 Shawn now able to play babyface, a role more suited to the smaller of the two in a ladder
07:47 match setting, helped to properly put a stamp on the Shawn/Razor rivalry and propel Shawn
07:52 even further up the corporate ladder.
07:54 There have been loads of rivalries in Shawn's career where he has had great matches and
07:58 told great stories, some of which we've talked about, some of which we've yet to
08:02 get to, but few on this list helped Shawn get to a new level in his career, quite like
08:07 the bad guy.
08:08 3.
08:09 Chris Jericho Lord are the 56 seconds I spend per entry
08:13 not enough time to talk about how f***ing brilliant the rivalry between Chris Jericho
08:17 and Shawn Michaels was.
08:18 If there was only their WrestleMania 19 match and feud to talk about, this rivalry would
08:22 still be a contender for this list.
08:24 It's that good, but what puts this in top contention not only on this list but on the
08:28 list of all WWE rivalries is what they did in 2008.
08:33 The first great rivalry that I ever saw in full as it was happening.
08:36 Baby's first WWE.
08:38 I really don't have time to go through it beat by beat (hell, I made a 28 minute YouTube
08:42 video talking about it), but what made this story so great was the variance of the four
08:47 pay-per-view matches they had over the course of their rivalry, matches made so different
08:51 by the ever-evolving yet always believable motives of each character.
08:56 Jericho is unsure whether to trust Michaels after HBK faked an injury.
09:00 Jericho tries to end Shawn's career after turning his back on the fans for hypocritically
09:03 backing Shawn after lying.
09:05 Shawn gets revenge for Jericho punching his wife, then a battle over a championship.
09:09 I have never been so engaged by one story start to finish in WWE.
09:15 I bow to you both.
09:17 Number 2.
09:18 The Undertaker.
09:19 I really wanted to put Jericho even higher, but honestly, there's no denying the historical
09:23 significance of Shawn's rivalry with Killian "The Dead Man" Fibbion.
09:27 From their 90's rivalry where Shawn got trapped in a box with Mark Spookums at Bad
09:31 Blood and their rematch where Shawn trapped the early demise in an even smaller box at
09:35 the Royal Rumble to being directly tied together over the course of four straight WrestleManias,
09:40 these two just always felt like perfect parallels.
09:43 They always seemed able to find their way back to one another in magical ways.
09:47 Even in short bursts like being the final two of the 2007 Royal Rumble or the first
09:51 two of the 2008 Royal Rumble, put these two in a ring and a level of reverence came with
09:56 it.
09:57 And of course, there is no better display of that than their clash at WrestleMania 25,
10:02 a match so good that it convinced WWE to give The Undertaker no other WrestleMania stories
10:08 for the next three years, ultimately culminating in a Hell in a Cell match that was an end
10:13 of an era.
10:14 It wasn't, but this entry is easier to wrap up if we pretend it was.
10:17 And number one, Bret Hart.
10:19 I mean, my god, right?
10:21 Honestly, if strictly based on their work together in the ring, I don't know that
10:25 Bret Hart would be in the top half of this list.
10:28 They didn't have bad matches together, but they never had the unrivaled classics you
10:32 would expect the two best of the new generation era to have.
10:35 I probably liked their Survivor Series 1992 match the best, even if Shawn was not at a
10:40 main event level of star power, but the rest are just alright.
10:44 Their Iron Man match really isn't that interesting, Montreal isn't much of a match, and their
10:48 latter match is more of a demonstration of a concept than what we would get later.
10:52 But this one isn't about the matches.
10:54 It is about just sheer amounts of unadulterated beef.
10:58 Real life beef.
11:01 The kind of beef that if WWE knew what was best for them would have resulted in the highest
11:05 pay-per-view buys ever and instead resulted in the Montreal Screwjob.
11:08 The time the showstopper literally stopped the show.
11:11 This is the kind of heat that people spend 25 years talking about, and any rivalry that
11:16 has that kind of effect on the business has to be regarded as being on a tier all its
11:21 own.
11:22 And that's our list.
11:23 Please make sure of course that you like this video and subscribe so you never miss a list
11:26 just like it, and check out this list above from our Greatest Rivals series.
11:30 Roman Reigns has indeed had a lot of rivalries over the last decade in between his many,
11:35 many interpersonal spats with Brick Lesberg, and now with Summerslam having passed, giving
11:40 us a neat and tidy place to look back on the Bloodline storyline, which you will be shocked