Hostility On The Set / Professional Wrestling

A major example of Real Life Writing the Plot.

Professional Wrestling is a dog-eat-dog business which attracts a lot of people who make Axl Rose and the Gallagher brothers look like Ned Flanders. While Kayfabe might be a thing, especially in this day and age with social media and online blogs, the hard truth of the matter is that, when the career of a professional wrestler revolves around making sure your persona is big, bold, and interesting, you need to have a monolithic ego to match in order to make the biggest splash. And when two egos clash for whatever reason (money, booking decisions, company hierarchy, botches...) outside of the TV camera, hostility happens.

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United States

• Lou Thesz:
  • He had a longstanding rivalry with/hatred of "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers, beginning when Rogers made derogatory remarks towards Thesz's manager and longtime friend, wrestling legend Ed "Strangler" Lewis. When Rogers was booked to lose the NWA World Title to Thesz, Thesz straight-up told him that he was leaving with the belt "the easy way or the hard way." The two would reconcile before Rogers' death in 1992.
  • Thesz had similar, but lesser, problems with Bruno Sammartino, mostly related to the fact that Thesz despised Sammartino's main backer, Joe "Toots" Mondt, and swore he would never make one of his proteges look good in the ring. After kayfabe was destroyed Sammartino came to Thesz's defense on the subject of never winning the NWA World Heavyweight Championship belt, saying Thesz would have gone through with dropping the belt to him if it meant gettting the WWWF back in the alliance but Sammartino himself refused to put up with the NWA World Heavyweight champion's schedule if he wasn't at least given Sundays off.
  • Thesz's refusal to participate in any tomfoolery or slapstick put him at odds with Antonino Rocca, whom made his career out of fast paced high flying moves, humiliating holds and strikes designed more to embarrass than physically harm the opponent such as his barefoot sole kicks. Thesz would in fact go out of his way to put over Rocca as a star, but only in his own way on his own terms with threat to seriously harm and humiliate Rocca in his own way if Rocca stepped out of line.
  • Thesz and Karl Gotch were as vocal as it was possible to be in the heyday of kayfabe about their different philosophies on professional wrestling, which escalated far enought to become physical during a brawl in the ring. However, Thesz made up with Gotch, who as it turned out was not bitter about it anyway, revealing he only took things that far out of the mistaken belief Gotch was part of a doublecross attempt. From then on the two men kept in touch until their deaths in spite of their sharp differences of opinion in their profession.
• Jerry Lawler, after signing with the WWF in 1993, had at least one wrestler defecate in his crown as retaliation for bad experiences from his Memphis-based promotion USWA.
• Bruiser Brody:
  • He used the ring name "King Kong Brody" out of respect for Dick the Bruiser in areas where Dick The Bruiser was already established. But do not mistake "respect" for "fondness", as Brody did not like Dick, at least not after Dick became a promoter in addition to a wrestler. In one match between them Dick pulled Brody's hair after being specifically told not to touch it. Later in the locker room where Dick expected to be giving Brody payment for the match Brody instead bashed Dick with a chair. All the same, don't mistake "dislike" for "disrespect". Brody openly admitted that when ever the Bruisers fought for real Dick always stood tall and took whatever Brody could hit him with, including being rammed into the lockers several times head first without falling down.
  • A narrow aversion happened in Brody's match with Lex Luger in 1987. For reasons still unknown/disputed to this day Brody decides to just stop cooperating and refuses to sell, and Luger, knowing full well how an actual fight between him and Brody would end, decked referee Bill Alfonso for the DQ.^note Yes, the same Bill Alfonso that would later manage Sabu, Tazz, and Rob Van Dam. Sadly Luger didn't hit him in such a way that would cause a very narrow type of brain damage that would leave Alfonso physically unable to use a whistle but otherwise completely unaffected He then set what is still a world speed record for a wrestler climbing out of a steel cage and ran to his car and drove off.
  • He apparently got along with two of the formerly legendary Garbage Wrestling Power Trio, The Invaders, apparently having a falling out with Invader #1 after #1 became the booker of CSP/WWC. Regardless of when their falling out happened, Brody was supposed to make Invader #1 look good on a CWC/WWWF show but instead just beat the crap out of him. Later in CSP/WWC there were again sounds of commotion in the locker room, with the assumption being Brody beating someone up again only for Invader #1 to found unscathed standing over a bleeding Brody with a knife. After Brody died from his wound it in turn lead to much hostility between several wrestlers and Invader #1, including popular draws like Terry Funk and Dory Funk Jr., who were friends with CSP/WWC promoter Carlos Colon but refused to return to Puerto Rico on principle. Manny Fernandez felt obligated to work with Invader #1 in an angle, but this was only after almost killing the innocent Invader #3 in Misplaced Retribution, who he mistook for #1 (they wear masks, in case you're wondering).
• Matt Borne and "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan had longstanding heat going all the way back to Mid-South Wrestling. The animosity may have stemmed from Borne blaming Duggan and promoter Bill Watts for a lawsuit from a fan who got injured by Borne and Duggan. There's also a story that Borne assaulted an ex-girlfriend who happened to be dating Duggan at the time. The two ended up in a locker-room brawl in a fight so intense that it became legendary in the locker room. Flash forward all the way to 2010 when the two nearly got into a shoot during a legends match on the indie circuit. Borne, allegedly, wanted to use a weapon in the match, which Duggan shot down. According to Duggan, he offered to fight Borne in the parking lot, but Borne left the building.
• Blackjack Mulligan had a contentious relationship with Ole Anderson, which eventually escalated to the point words were not enough. Mulligan had to knock out Anderson on three separate occasions before Anderson got the hint and learned to leave him alone.
• Ric Flair may have once exposed himself to children while inebriated (gaining a life long grudge from Shane Douglas, or at least that what Douglas claims, Flair burying him while being a booker has nothing to do with it), Arn Anderson may have been legitimately afraid of his Tag Team partner Ole Anderson for a while, but the man in the original Four Horsemen lineup who had the most people in the locker room reaching for his neck was Tully Blanchard. No less than Jim Crockett, who eventually took control of the entire NWA, hated his guts. Hence Blanchard initially wasn't part of WCW when it succeeded JCP, despite being a proven draw, but Arn Anderson wasn't either as he was loyal to Blanchard. But eventually Arn and Tully had a falling out too over Tully experimenting with cocaine. Granted, their falling out was nothing compared to the hatred Anderson, both Andersons, developed for Jim Herd, whom Arn held more responsible for losing his WCW payoffs. Tully also had issues with Magnum T.A., and made even more enemies by beating the piss out of Magnum after Magnum had been disabled in a car accident^note In fairness Magnum did steal Tully's wife, while that's not an excuse for beating up a handicapped guy (or even an able-bodied guy) it gives a little explanation to why he beat up a handicapped guy. Tully's daughter Tessa^note Or Magnum's stepdaughter Tessa also became a wrestler and seemingly inherited her father's charming people skills, which you can read about further down the page.
• Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage had a long standing love/hate relationship, with Savage at one point challenging Hogan to a real life fight for charity, which Hogan refused and Savage mocked him for it on his rap album's title track "Be a Man". Hogan claims that he and Savage made peace with each other not long before Savage's passing in 2011, but not before Savage turned down TNA in 2004 after already having made a couple of appearances there when Hogan appeared in the locker room to visit with friends.
• Savio Vega had it with Invader #1 after the stabbing of Bruiser Brody, which he initially avoided when founding his own company, IWA Puerto Rico, by simply refusing to allow Invader #1 to be booked. To a lesser extent he had a grudge with Victor Quiñones for overruling him and booking Invader #1 in IWA Puerto Rico (as it was an extension of IWA Japan, giving Quiñones the final say), Richard Negrin, for overruling him and booking Invader #1 in The World Wrestling League, even Carlos Colon and Victor Jovica in WWC for continuing to book Invader 1, as a baby face no less. In the WWL case, Vega and Negrin had a public burial of the hatchet before turning their hostility into an angle that resulted in Vega "breaking away" after a temporary Hostile Show Takeover and restarting IWA Puerto Rico after six years of inactivity. Vega still ended up having to put up with Invader's presence, however.
• Ever wonder what would happen if some idiot local Jobber decided to go into business for himself and not sell for the guys that are squashing him? He gets the living shit kicked out of him by Sid Vicious and Dan Spivey. Watch and laugh.
• Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels - to the extent that Bret's 2010 return to WWE broke kayfabe on TV and had them bury the hatchet. For more information see the Montreal Screwjob.
  • Bret Hart likewise didn't like Triple H who was best friends with Michaels and unlike Michaels, Bret has never had anything nice to say about Triple H^note In Bret's defense Triple H has never said anything positive about about him either. Its rumored Triple H was the one who came up with the Montreal Screwjob, while these rumors have been debunked many times over (it was actually Jim Cornette, though he didn't do it intentionally) Triple H has still taken credit for it. Vince Russo also claims to have come up with it despite not knowing what a double-cross was until he saw it happen.
• Jim Cornette and Paul Heyman worked well on camera together as the managers of The Midnight Express but off camera did not enjoy each other's company. As behind the scenes incidents of professional wrestling became more widely known, their real life antipathy was used for an on camera feud in WCW, most memorably in a tuxedo match where the two men ignored the stipulation and convinced fans they had decided to settle their differences then and there.
  • Cornette has since said the feud between the two was 100% work at that point, though only Cornette, Heyman, and a couple others knew it was all for show (this is known as "working the boys", in other words being so dedicated to the angle that even your co-workers think it's real). The non-comedic nature of the tuxedo match was just Cornette wanting to have a match he wouldn't be embarrassed of^note He had also torn his ACL (for the second time) a couple days beforehand, so throwing punches and selling was all he could really do physically. Cornette and Heyman would stay in contact for a while even after Cornette quit WCW, the worked hostility became real once they were running competing promotions. Today Cornette has no problem calling Heyman a pathological liar (and he's not the first to make that claim) but also says he highly respects what Heyman has done and is still doing in wrestling, often calling him the only part of WWE programming that's worth watching.
• Mark Henry got sent out of WWF to the attempted revival of the Stampede territory in Calgary to "learn discipline" after he threatened to beat up Shawn Michaels for stealing one of his crutches while he was injured. The leg injury prevented Henry from catching Michaels but that was only going to last so long.
• Triple H and Shawn Michaels weren't very high on Rocky Maivia when he tried out for WWF and continued to try to cut off his run in the company until he joined The Nation of Domination. The Rock and Triple H would move past this, but The Rock has notably never worked with Michaels. (Admittedly, Michaels was forced into a four-year hiatus from wrestling due to a severe back injury that coincided with the height of The Rock's career, but there were still several opportunities both before and after.) Some of the heat between The Rock and Michaels even dates back before The Rock was a wrestler; Shawn Michaels had once done a show for The Rock's grandmother's wrestling promotion and Shawn was said to be have been very disrespectful to Rock's grandmother. This greatly angered a then teenage Rock who was ready to fight Shawn for that and had to be stopped from fighting Shawn.
  • About a decade later, history would repeat, only with Michaels and HHH burying CM Punk during his WWE tryouts. Again, Punk and Triple H managed to work something out (at least before Punk's departure from WWE in acrimonious terms in 2014); if Punk and Michaels did too, they haven't felt the need to make it known ^note It has been stated that Shawn Michaels actually vouched for Punk at creative meetings and was critical of writers who didn't get Punk and just wanted to bury him.Granted it seems that as of 2023 Punk is on good terms with Triple H and has buried the hatchet with him. He also was shown getting along with Shawn Michaels at the NXT Deadline show which suggest no bad blood with him either if there was any.
• New Jack had issues with the bookers of both Smoky Mountain Wrestling and Extreme Championship Wrestling, with the former in fact trading him to the latter after deeming him an ill fit.
  • New Jack believed Jim Cornette to be a racist, and while it would be a stretch to call Cornette a white supremacist, when cutting promos and as a booker Cornette had no problem using politically incorrect stereotypes for the purpose of building heat and had only a tiny respect for N-Word Privileges. Cornette, for his part, viewed Jack as a violent troublemaker^note Considering New Jack's loooooooooong history of missing shows because he was in jail for one reason or another, Cornette seems to have had a point. This constant no-showing may explain some of the issues Heyman had with him, as noted below, and while Jack will argue his actions were justified, even sensible, he did admit to trying to kill an opponent during a match once. For what it's worth, Jack would eventually rebuild his bridges with Cornette after their semi retirements, and even when their relationship was at its worst, Jack said doing business with Cornette was never difficult.
  • With Paul Heyman, Jack took his work being relegated to non televised dark matches personally and was offended when they were later put back on television in an effort to get TNN to cancel ECW. Jack also refused to work with a few wrestlers Heyman was intent on pushing, such as Taz^note Taz himself would ask Heyman for permission to shoot on wrestlers he did not like but unlike Jack, Heyman could still trust Taz to do as he was told.
  • New Jack also tried to murder Vic Grimes after the Danbury fall, which was, for all intents and purposes, a botch. However they were later booked in another show of another promotion, and this time Jack would try to launch Grimes from quite the height, luckily Grimes wasn't killed.
• "Stone Cold" Steve Austin had a laundry list of people he would never work with in the ring when he was on top. Notable names include:
  • Jeff Jarrett, who, being a Christian, claimed his Austin 3:16 slogan was a Blasphemous Boast on a Raw promo following Jarrett's return in 1997, something Austin feared could tank his merchandise sales (for the record, Austin isn't religious but has gone on record saying that he never meant it to be taken as blasphemous). There was also said to be heat dating back to when Stone Cold had wrestled for Jeff's father Jerry who was known to pay his wrestlers peanuts and on one occasion when Austin had looked in shock at his low pay, Jeff was said to have remarked "It's not going to get any bigger by you staring at it". This is said to have majorly angered Austin at its insensitive nature.^note The lone interaction between the two in the WWF came a couple weeks after the promo mentioned above and saw Austin hit Jarrett (who had just won the NWA North American title) with a Stunner and then mock his strut, burying Jarrett and the whole NWA angle. Which was probably for the best.
  • Owen Hart, who broke Austin's neck doing a piledriver, very nearly permanently paralyzing him. To make matters worse, Owen not only did the move in a manner Austin told him not to (he dropped to his butt, instead of kneeling, and Austin's head was too low for the former), but never apologized for it (reportedly out of guilt), something even his brother Bret criticized him for.^note None of this would stop Austin from giving a brief tribute to Owen during the first episode of Raw following the latter's tragic death two years later.
  • Marc Mero, who Austin was going to at least squash until Mero jobbed to Sable^note This was more hostility towards the bookers than Mero himself. "You think I'm working with a guy that just got powerbombed by his wife? Fuck that noise!".
• Luna Vachon was a genuinely loving and friendly woman, but she suffered from bipolar disorder which could lead to her snapping and assaulting people with little warning, including her very patient husband Gangrel.
  • Jacqueline was a notoriously stiff wrestler, but usually Luna tolerated it, and was in fact good friends with hers. At a USWA show, however, Vachon suddenly had no patience for Jacquline's stiffness and went into business for herself, legitimately beating up Jacqueline and pinning her in a match Jacqueline was supposed to win. Vachon then burst into the locker room, while Jacqueline was complaining about being sucker punched, to sucker punch and beat her up again. This would have gotten Vachon fired if Gangrel had no been present to play peacemaker.
  • Luna was booked in a match to make the evil foreign giant rookie Jessicka Havok look good, but seemingly out of the blue decided to take liberties in a match that left young Havok traumatized, including calling a spot that lead to her spiking Havok's head on concrete.
• While Gangrel was usually the peace maker, he freely admits to losing his patience with an inebirated Ric Flair during an Australian tour and coming a few steps short of assaulting him, with alcohol itself being needed to pacify Gangrel.
• Sable:
  • During her first run with the WWE, she reportedly let her popularity go to her head and couldn't even be spoken to directly on the phone. Luna Vachon claims that she was supposed to be Women's Champion but Sable refused to drop the title or claimed she hadn't brought it with her. Luna was eventually fired for getting into a backstage fight with her.
  • In the second run Torrie Wilson says that they were initially friendly, but after they posed for Playboy together their relationship soured. She recalls a big shouting match in the locker room where Sable called Dawn Marie over to say "my Playboy cover sold more than hers".
• Torrie also claims that The Undertaker's second wife Sara hated her, and she and Debra ganged up on her during the brief 2001 period they were both on the road.
• Chyna alienated a lot of people shortly before her departure from the WWF.
  • Ivory was irritated by her multiple times during their program for Chyna's lack of professionalism - condescendingly asking her if she knew how to do a hair-pull slam, covering her disrespectfully after their title match at WrestleMania X-Seven and not being quiet about how she viewed the women's division as being beneath her.
  • Stacy Carter (best known as Miss Kitty or The Kat) says that she and Chyna were initially close friends when they were paired together in 1999-2000, but after Chyna posed for Playboy, she distanced herself from her former friend. Stacy claims she was asked to pose for Playboy as well, which would have meant Chyna's next shoot being pushed back, and Chyna took offense. Stacy strongly suspects that this led to Chyna pulling strings to get her fired (as the only reason Vince McMahon could give for firing her was "attitude problems"). Carter later commented how much had Chyna changed to do this.
  "The person that was... that was not the person that I knew."
  • Chris Jericho hated working with Chyna, and they mutually disliked each other. Neither of them were happy to be paired together as part of the co-champions storyline in 2000. He was actually happy when he dropped the European title to Eddie Guerrero, and Chyna was paired with him, relieved that "she was his problem now". On his podcast "Talk is Jericho," he would even admit that his experience with Chyna was why he was initialy not high on intergender matches.
• According to Carter again, the nastiest person in the WWE (or the Attitude Era specifically) was Janet the make-up artist. Stacy recalls her one day locking the Godfather's Hos inside a dark room and not letting them out. Josette Bynum - best known for her run in TNA as Sojourner Bolt, and who encountered Janet during some of her tryout matches - confirms this, saying that Janet would attack her for being in a certain area of the building (that she had been told to be in by agents).
• Gabe Sapolsky's dislike of Low Ki and Steve Corino explains why they had shorter pushes than their popularity would suggest in Ring of Honor, where he did the booking. Still, Sapolsky found them nothing if not reliable until Ki legitimately knocked out Ahtu on an EVOLVE card, where Sapolsky was again doing the booking. He also described Kevin Steen and El Generico as "difficult" to work with, though still used them in an effort to establish ROH in Quebec, which for better or worse didn't pan out.
• The WWE Diva Search was a gimmick thought up in 2003 to hire a new Diva out of several models and actresses. That year, the winner won a photoshoot for Raw Magazine, but in 2004, it was upgraded into a full talent search with a $250,000 contract as the prize. Most of the talent was not happy with a non-wrestler earning more than most of them, which was accidentally exacerbated when the contestants were told not to bother them backstage, earning them reputations for being aloof and snobby.
  
  The contestants got along rather well — except for the runner-up Carmella DeCesare. Amy Weber claims that all the girls got on very well, but Carmella acted like an Alpha Bitch towards them; Maria Kanellis confirmed this, detailing an incident where Carmella arrived late and literally kicked her out of the make-up chair (it's very telling that while the contest was going on, Carmella was also facing criminal charges for assaulting another woman in a night club). In a segment titled 'Diss the Diva', allowing the remaining contestants to have a live mic and trash talk their opponents - the other three gave Carmella a "The Reason You Suck" Speech each (compared to the more playful teasing they gave the others). Ironically when they turned this into a storyline, Carmella's kayfabe rival Christy Hemme, was the one girl she appeared to get on with (in her 'Diss the Diva' promo she said "Christy, I hope you win" and sincerely congratulated her when she won).
• Teddy Hart entered Ring of Honor with baggage from an earlier feud with Steve Corino, warning Gabe Sapolsky that he would beat Corino up if he signed Hart. Instead of that promised confrontation, Hart picked a fight with CM Punk, decided to back out of it when Punk showed up, then changed his mind again and tried to rearrange Punk's face before Sabu separated them^note Hart has bipolar disorder and refuses to medicate it, so his behavior can be erratic; Punk probably should have just left before he got manic. This, along with several other backstage incidents in TNA and several unplanned scramble cage dives in ROH that lead to the wrestlers having to catch Hart without preparation to stop him from hurting himself, Hart projectile vomiting into the audience and then projectile vomiting again in the ring that ROH still needed for the rest of the week before he finally stopped scrambling up the cage to do more dives got Hart blackballed by both companies ^note ROH brought him back for one night appearances after proving he could behave himself "as a fan". TNA tried to bring him back but that just lead to more trouble. Contrary to popular belief, Punk was not fired for his part in the fight, but willingly left TNA over a contract dispute when TNA tried to bar him from returning to ROH after the Rob Feinstein scandal. This later became a reoccurring theme with Teddy over the course of his career, leading to him not just be blackballed from practically ever major promotion in North America, but also fired for his own genuine safety because of how much he tended to piss off members of any locker room he joined.
• Ken Anderson and CM Punk had unfriendly relations stemming from Punk's time as a color commentator on IWA Mid-South where Punk would bury absolute anyone and anything without warning. Anderson felt Punk's comments were going too far out of kayfabe and too close to the bone. This continued into both of their WWE careers, however Punk was willing to make amends and Anderson eventually believed him enough for them to move on.
• Back in 2005 after he was traded over to WWE SmackDown, Batista was very unhappy about this, stating that the "B" show roster was lazy because they knew if they goofed up on Tuesday, they could just edit it to what they wanted before the Thursday broadcast. This won him zero respect backstage and the tension continued while filming promos for the next year's SummerSlam with him and Booker T getting into it which culminated with the latter knocking the former down with a single punch.
• In 2006 the tag team MNM had to be split up, and Johnny Nitro and Melina moved to Raw because tensions in the stable between them and Joey Mercury were just too high. In fact, Melina in general was a nuclear heat magnet, to the point where she was taken to Wrestler's Court and yelled at until she cried. Shortly after the 'Me Too Movement' emerged, Melina opened up about being sexually assaulted and harassed backstage multiple times (though she never named names).
• Chris Hero and STIGMA were rivals for the affections of the same woman. A rivalry that would lead to Hero being expelled from Chikara, and having the name "Chris Hero" auto censored to "John Kerry" on the Chikara message boards.
• Eddie Kingston had a grudge against the majority of the ROH locker room for mocking his physique while giving Kevin Steen a pass. Steen actually did get called "disrespectful" by CM Punk, but only after Steen complained about booker Gabe Sapolsky's request to wear a singlet instead of a t-shirt and tried to explain himself to Punk while blown up after a match, causing his words to come out wrong.^note Jim Cornette also had issues with Steen's weight when he was with ROH, leading to some minor hostility between the two and shots fired in interviews after Cornette left ROH. There was also some heat with Steen's Heterosexual Life-Partner Sami Zayn over Zayn's insistence that he pretend to be a Mexican under a mask that can't speak English, instead of showing his face and cutting promos like a normal wrestler. Like with Steen this has largely dissipated as the years have gone by and Cornette usually speaks well of their current work on his podcast Regardless, Punk and Steen made up fairly quickly while Punk and Kingston's beef continued decades later into All Elite Wrestling, even if the hostility did not keep the two men from working together.
  • By contrast, Kingston actually started a fight in the locker room with Sammy Guevara over Guevara mocking Kingston's weight. Popular opinion among the other wrestlers is that Kingston simply disliked Guevara and was waiting for an excuse to take a swing at him, but the hostility is obvious whatever the reason. On the other hand he isn't the only AEW wrestler to punch Guevara in the face, as noted below.
• Maria Kanellis:
  • She claims she initially got along with Melina "but then she drove me crazy", giving their With Friends Like These... angle in 2009 an uncomfortable Reality Subtext (and sparked rumors that Melina's sudden move to Raw was to separate them, though Maria was away filming The Celebrity Apprentice at this point, so the truth is up in the air). After both leaving the company (in 2010 for Maria, 2011 for Melina) they appeared on several After Buzz interviews together seemingly good friends again.
  • There was also a bit of tension between Maria and the Bella Twins, though the specifics were never known. In an interview, when asked about Maria, the twins declined comment. Rumors that the twins had prevented WWE from rehiring her, Kelly Kelly, Maryse and Beth Phoenix hit the internet in 2013, leading to Maria becoming quite outspoken about them. She later apologized, and actually returned to WWE a couple of years later.
• Michelle McCool and Beth Phoenix were a mild example. They worked a match together in 2008 that ended with Michelle getting a concussion due to a botched Glam Slam from Beth. The latter never said anything about it afterwards, leading Michelle to believe Beth simply hadn't realized. Then over a year later when they began feuding on-screen, she read an article in a magazine that showed Beth did know she had injured her after all. Their 2010 program was apparently marked with a few moments where Beth went to the office to get some of their segments changed. Beth did, however, thank Michelle in her Hall of Fame induction speech in 2017.
  • Speaking of McCool, she admitted in Lilian Garcia's podcast that she was resented backstage over dating (and eventually marrying) The Undertaker, with her being accused of the relationship being the reason behind her being consistently pushed to success. It got to the point that one of the writers on SmackDown got in on it by suggesting the brand be renamed "The Michelle McCool & Undertaker Show". This all became one of the reasons she chose to retire as the non-stop accusations were causing her to hate her career and the business she grew up loving, citing she would've had a sour taste in her mouth had she stayed.
• TNA became a hostile working environment for Jeff Jarrett and Kurt Angle after the former had an affair with the latter's wife that lead to a divorce, and a custody settlement that ended up being more public than Angle wanted. This one ended up being turned into an onscreen angle, but not before TNA's financial backer Dixie Carter flipped and suspended Jarrett from tapings. When TNA stopped making a profit as Carter exerted more and more control over it, Jarrett attempted to buy back the company from Panda Energy but opted out of the deal after Carter's parents insisted Dixie remain in a visible place with some level of authority.
• Austin Aries:
  • He has a long running feud with TNA management in general and Impact Vice President Don Callis in particular, at one point showing up at ROH shows "as a fan" in protest to TNA contract terms and signing an ROH contract on the spot the moment he was fired long distance for it. Another case was he and Davey Richards actively trying to have an underwhelming match after leaving Impact Wrestling, again, on not so well terms. His most visible instance of defiance though was on an Impact Wrestling pay-per-view where he no sold the Starship Pain, the Finishing Move of John Morrison, just to flip the bird to Callis, leaving Morrison bewildered.
  • To a lesser extent, Aries has a vocal feud with Jim Cornette, who was in TNA, ROH and MLW with him, though it was the usually docile Cary Silkin who ultimately fired Aries for mouthing off about not getting paid enough, even if Cornette was the one who had issue with Aries getting more money than every other wrestler in ROH while doing the least work. Aries actually believes Silkin was correct but has personal issues with Cornette that go beyond money.
• The tension between Mercedes Martinez and the Midwest Militia when they feuded in WSU was quite real. In an interview with Diva Dirt Mercedes said that things got to the point where she suffered a concussion in their War Games match at the 5th Anniversary Show and, despite warning Jessicka, the latter still hit her with her finisher anyway. That said, Martinez worked out enough with Havok to have a SHIMMER title defense against her in a cross promotional event (Garly Pop's Life Love And Lady Wrestling) without incident and a lengthy program with Allysin Kay in SHINE.
• The on-screen heat between John Cena and The Rock during their 2011-2012 feud was apparently legit, based on both men having taken potshots at each other years earlier in shoot interviews. They seemed to have patched things up by the time the feud was revisited in 2013.
• A.J. Lee had a couple of incidents. She revealed in her autobiography that she suffers from Bipolar Disorder.
  • After her famous "Pipe Bombshell" promo on the Total Divas cast, there was legitimate heat between AJ and Natalya. The latter was genuinely offended by AJ's words, feeling it had invalidated all her hard work to make it to WWE (as she was the only non model-turned-wrestler in the cast). In a 2014 interview, Natalya praised Paige for not letting winning the Divas' Championship go to her head, which was seen as an obvious Take That! to AJ.
  • Cameron has said that AJ was very difficult to work with and seemed unwilling to help guide a greener opponent in the ring. She was given a title match against AJ that she didn't have much time to prepare for because AJ was feeling sick on the day, and didn't give the okay until the last minute. Years after they'd both left WWE, AJ took a shot at Cameron by including a caricature of her in a GLOW comic she created.
  • Rosa Mendes describes one day going right up to AJ and telling her how much she didn't like her attitude, although AJ's response was to thank her for being honest rather than gossiping behind her back. After leaving WWE, Rosa however said she respected her character and work ethic.
  • Around the time of her Divas' Championship win in 2013, AJ notably unfollowed a good portion of the roster on Twitter, aside from Kaitlyn and Naomi, meaning it was not part of the storylines. The most notable of this number included Natalya (mentioned above) and Daniel Bryan, who had worked with AJ closely in the past, but did not take kindly to her repeated slut shaming of his fiancé and eventual wife Brie Bella in promos.
  • The Bella Twins revealed in their autobiography that AJ's "Pipe Bombshell" promo was unscripted, and none of the women involved knew what she was going to say. Both got legitimately offended over a line mocking them for "daddy issues", when a Total Divas episode had just aired detailing how their father was an abusive addict (and the book also revealed Nikki briefly had to run away from home because of it). They were also annoyed with AJ's frequent Slut-Shaming of them resulting in her infamously large fan base repeatedly doing the same, which was especially uncomfortable for Nikki as a survivor of sexual assault. They apparently were able to work together during their 2014-2015 programs, and Nikki did say in a 2019 podcast with Paige that a dream match would involve the twins getting to team with her and AJ. They also expressed a wish that AJ could have been part of the first WWE all-women's PPV in 2018.
• Sasha Banks
  • Sasha and Charlotte Flair were initially good friends but had a falling out backstage, resulting in their alliance on NXT quietly disappearing.
  • Tensions between Sasha and Alexa Bliss have been evident for years, until both women essentially confirmed it in 2017. While the reason wasn't stated, many believed it was due to a match at NXT back in late 2014 in which Sasha busted Alexa's nose, and allegedly never apologized backstage. The two even made occasional potshots at each other on social media since. By 2020 however, they appeared to have patched things up - as both have praised the other in interviews. Sasha also admits to suffering from depression, resulting in her sudden hiatus in 2019.
  • Although Banks returned to the company later in 2019, she constantly clashed with creative over perception of sliding down the card despite her general popularity and crossing over into mainstream appearances (including a guest stint on The Mandalorian and narrating the opening video package for the 2022 college football national championship). This culminated in May 2022 where, upon learning she and tag team partner Trinity "Naomi" Fatu would be dropping the tag team championship amidst a break-up angle, both women walking out of the company (dropping the belts off at John Laurinaitis's office along the way), a story that went public quickly enough that WWE not only addressed it publicly, but called both women "unprofessional" in a statement and on television commentary while also weaving the walk-out into its quickly-assembled main event substitute.
• Scott Steiner:
  • Tensions between Diamond Dallas Page and Scott Steiner boiled over after Scott Steiner called out Page in an unscripted promo on WCW Nitro, saying that Page had no balls and would have to get a sex change in order to be the man that Steiner was. Steiner was infuriated when Page's then-wife Kimberly implicated Tammy Lynn Sytch for drug possession, leading to Sytch's departure. After Steiner returned to the locker room, Page confronted him and they started fighting backstage. In a departure from many recollections of backstage brawls and real fights of professional wrestlers, Page freely admits that he was no match for Steiner. and only fought Steiner because he knew he'd be branded a coward if he didn't.
  • While Steiner and Page are on decent terms nowadays, Steiner still has nothing but seething hatred for Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan, two other men that he eviscerated on shoot promos, more or less calling them both used-up has-been who were holding down younger stars. Steiner was in the midst of a single push in the early '90s and had a match against Flair, where Flair supposedly did everything he could to make Steiner look bad, resulting in Scott not receiving another singles push until 1998 when the Steiner Brothers split up. Regarding Hogan, the two had a confrontation at an airport prior to the 2015 WWE Hall of Fame ceremony, as Steiner was enraged that Hogan was chosen to induct the late "Macho Man" Randy Savage into the Hall of Fame, given the tensions between Hogan and Savage while the latter was still alive (see above). Allegedly, Steiner went as far as threatening to kill Hogan (which Scott denies) and he was banned from attending the Hall of Fame ceremony that year.
• Jim Cornette and Vince Russo worked together in WWF (during the Attitude Era) and TNA, and couldn't be any more different if they tried. Cornette is a wrestling traditionalist, while Russo, well, isn't, so there were many creative differences between the two. To this day, Cornette has nothing but unbridled disdain for Russo (and Russo isn't too fond of Cornette either), to the point where Cornette's life goal is to outlive Russo so that he can piss on his grave. He has also more or less threatened to kill Russo himself on several occasions.
• In addition to Chyna, Ivory had a few problems with several workers. There was a period in the 2000s where she was denouncing half the roster in shoot interviews. Years later, she appeared to mellow out (especially in light of her Hall of Fame induction) and owned up to some residual bitterness after her WWE release. Still...
  • She joked about hating the PR gigs she had to do with Bradshaw, because of his reputation as a backstage bully, and described him as a very insecure Manchild.
  • Mildly with Lita, who she found difficult to work with - as she was unwilling to improve or step outside her comfort zone. There was also backstage drama after a match where Lita got a nasty cut above the eye after one of Ivory's boots supposedly hit her while Lita was doing an enzuigiri.
  • She took a shot at Terri Poch in a shoot interview with RF Video, but didn't elaborate.
  • She hated Stacy Carter, because she didn't want excessive Fanservice associated with the Right to Censor act, and was annoyed at a segment where she had to pretend to be afraid of The Kat. This appears to be one-sided, as Stacy has praised Ivory in interviews.
  • When she was acting as a trainer at OVW, she was rather notorious for being a Drill Sergeant Nasty. A developmental talent Bobbi Billard detailed instances of Slut-Shaming and going so hard on them in training that several got injured and later released (when Ivory and Jacqueline, who was also infamous for working stiff, got released she called it Laser-Guided Karma on a blog). Others ended up quitting because of the mental health problems resulting from this bullying.
• Lita actually got into a fight with Stacy Keibler when the latter first joined the company in 2001. Stacy apparently got drunk in a nightclub and started flirting with Matt Hardy (who Lita was dating at the time). She apologized the next day and they never had any other problems.
• Krissy Vaine admitted to having some tension with Michelle McCool during their time in DSW. As Krissy was experienced on the indies, she was told by trainers they expected her to be a locker room leader, but due to a misunderstanding of what that meant, she alienated Michelle by giving her feedback after one of her matches. While they had a talk sometime afterwards where Michelle claimed she didn't have a problem with her, Krissy recalls things being extremely tense between them.
• Kia Stevens:
  • In a YouShoot interview, when playing the 'Ho Bag' game (where the interviewee is given a list of female wrestlers and puts them in the bag if they were rude or promiscuous), she immediately put Madison Rayne in the bag - but didn't clarify why.
  • In 2010, she had a well documented backstage fight with Bubba the Love Sponge after he made inappropriate tweets about victims of the Haitian earthquake. She ended up getting ambushed weeks later on a radio show, where the host was one of Bubba's friends.
  • There was some rather extreme beef between Kong and Reby Sky, stemming from the latter calling out Sid Vicious for no-showing an indie event (and allegedly scamming the organisers out of money). Kong went off on a tirade about her during a YouShoot interview and when the news reached Reby, she called her a "fakeass bitch" on Twitter. When they both ended up in TNA together, a backstage altercation happened when Kong threw Reby's luggage out of the locker room. Rumor has it she tried to assault her in front of her young son.
• Trenesha Biggers:
  • She has worked in at least three companies with Amazing Kong and was even part of two power stables with her, but that does not mean the two get along. Kong claims that their relationship was okay until Biggers borrowed money from Kong's aunt and refused to pay it back.
  • Biggers has a reputation for working overly stiff, particularly after she started a fight with Roxxi Laveaux after Laveaux became angry about how hard she was getting hit.
  • Biggers dated Kurt Angle while they were both in TNA, but that doesn't mean their relationship was a happy or healthy one, which lead to Biggers snitching about Angle's substance abuse issues, though his multiple DUI charges made it a moot issue with management.
• Amy Weber, who was with WWE from 2004-2005 as JBL's "Image Consultant", detailed two incidents of backstage bullying that led to her leaving the company.
  • While training for a match with Joy Giovanni, she took a bad bump and was advised to get some ice and Ibuprofen from the men's locker room. On a flight back from Japan, she recalls Randy Orton knocking her out of her chair "like a line backer" and yelling "you're gonna learn, bitch!"
  • On the same flight, she had a drink poured on her while she was sleeping, and woke up to see Edge as the apparent culprit. He denied it, and this led to a shouting match right there in the aisle. As soon as the plane landed, she handed her notice in and never returned to the company.
• Kelly Kelly had a run-in with Randy Orton too. During their 2009 program, he apparently went off script during promos and said things about her that made her feel uncomfortable. She ended up going to the office about it and, while she claims there were no hard feelings, he ended up taking a potshot at her in an interview ("I could name about ten guys who have method acted with Kelly Kelly"). Notably for the following year, they were placed on different brands.
• While Trish Stratus appears to have gotten on with most people during her time in WWE, her return in 2011 to work a program going into WrestleMania led to some hostility with the man she was working with - John Morrison. Allegedly he felt the spot should have gone to his then-girlfriend Melina (never mind that she'd just turned heel, and Trish was appearing as a face), and proceeded to act very cold and resistant towards Trish for the remainder of their time together. She described a moment where they'd just had a match, and he cold shouldered her in the post-match celebration. Edge reportedly was so disgusted with this, he likewise snubbed him backstage the week of his retirement.
• Tessa Blanchard has just as many issues with her coworkers as her father did with his, and thanks to the internet usage becoming widespread Tessa's conflicts are known to many more people than Tully's
  • One of the problems plaguing WOW's 2012 revival was the lack of progress shown by the new wrestl...superheroes trained for the show and part of that came from friction between two of the women responsible for the training, Tessa Blanchard and Malia Hosaka. Since both took professional wrestling seriously it was wrongly assumed they'd get along.
  • Blanchard claimed that several women in Impact Wrestling were hostile to her and singled out Ivelisse Vélez specifically in an interview. Velez, for her part, was confused about why Blanchard would feel that way and concluded Blanchard must have misunderstood something she had said. There were two Impact Knockouts more than happy to publicly express their issues with Blanchard however. Allysin Kay and Chelsea Green both believed Blanchard was a Straw Hypocrite and or projecting politician, Green specifically stating Blanchard went out of her way to make the other knockouts look bad at the ROH turned general indie-international supercard "All In" that lead to All Elite Wrestling.
  • Kay also revealed to the fans what had been an Open Secret to other wrestlers; that La Rosa Negra had been fired from World Wonder Ring ST★RDOM after beating up Blanchard in an apartment room. Previously "Big Swole" Aerial Monroe had strong armed Tessa and La Rosa into privately making peace after finding both of them at the same Wrestlecon but thanks to Kay hostilities arose anew as Tessa publicly denied having started the apartment fight^note Not only throwing the first strike or spitting on La Rosa but because Tessa was said to have used an ethnic slur. While Tessa and La Rosa still weren't ready to work with each other, they did bury the hatchet again after they both appeared on a Ladies Night Out show.
• Ivelisse Vélez:
  • One of Lucha Underground's long-running angles was her nigh universal hatred of Jack Evans, and it apparently wasn't all on camera, as he went so far as to challenge Vélez to a fight, and ended up citing her as a reason for leaving the show. Vélez for her part expressed her shock and disgust, claiming that she had no intention of feuding with Evans and that he challenged her because she "spoke to him as an equal."
  • Ivelisse Velez also became hostile to Kobra Moon during a Lucha Underground pareja match where Moon refused to do spots called by Velez's then-Tag Team partner Bengala, and broke his jaw in an exchange of punches. Velez was honored to work with Bengala, and felt that as the rookie, Moon had no right to treat the veteran in such a manner. Moon insists she didn't know how to do those spots and had simply given Bengala a receipt for a potato. If Moon is to be believed, the hostility is also one-sided, as she claims to have no intention of feuding with Velez outside of the ring. Nonetheless, this continued in AEW, where both Vélez and Moon ended up (Moon now known as Thunder Rosa), where Vélez claimed Rosa trying to "sabotage" her was one of the reason why she was released.
• Jay Lethal
  • He drew the ire of ACH when the latter could not make it to a Ring of Honor show where Lethal was defending the Television Title belt and cut a promo with then manager Truth Martini to explain the absence, where they claimed "ACH" stood for "A Crack Head". Half a decade later, after leaving ROH and being offered a return, ACH decided to burn his bridges with the company, or at least with Lethal, by calling him an "Uncle Tom" before opting to try to return to NOAH in Japan.
  • After the second House Of Truth breakup in ROH, Jay Lethal, Joey Daddiego and Donovan Dijak were kept while Truth Martini and Taeler Hendrix were released. Hendrix in particular claims Lethal had a part in her release because she refused his sexual advances. While most wrestlers refuse to comment and some take up for Lethal, Joey Matthews quite vocally took Hendrix's side while also saying Martini was only let go because his misbehavior was harder to cover up than Lethal's.
• After seeing him rejected by the company once, Mark Henry decided to take Lio Rush aside after Rush successfully signed, to teach him how to continue to succeed in the WWE system. This attempt at mentorship was not well received by Rush. It started as a simple and brief disagreement, apparently over bag carrying, but escalated to a war of words on podcasts and Twitter after Rush's WWE release, which lead Henry giving Rush the call in number to Henry's radio show and then threatening Rush with legal action after Rush claimed Henry torpedoed the careers of black wrestlers.
• Goldberg and Chris Jericho had a backstage rivalry in WCW that carried on into WWE. Jericho was pushing for a storyline with Goldberg, calling him out in some entertaining programs, with the goal being for him to lose to Goldberg in a PPV squash match. Goldberg didn't want to do this because he thought working with Jericho was beneath him (reportedly, some of the veterans were Goldberg's ear and told him that working with a cruiserweight would hurt his credibility, which Goldberg, being very inexperienced in the business, took to heart). Goldberg ultimately won out, and it was this that made Jericho realize that he'd hit the glass ceiling in WCW and left for WWF in 1999. When Goldberg made his way to WWE in 2003, Jericho was willing to make amends, but Goldberg still carried that chip on his shoulder from WCW. The two would get into a backstage fight which Jericho came out on top of after he put Goldberg into a front facelock until other wrestlers split them apart. A couple decades later, the two were able to laugh it off on Jericho's podcast, with Goldberg freely admitting that Jericho kicked his ass.
• Hulk Hogan match with Shawn Michaels at SummerSlam back in 2005 is famous for Michaels comedically over the top selling of Hogan's offense. This was due to the fact Hogan had pulled out of doing a rematch after SummerSlam where Michaels was going to win after he lost to Hogan at SummerSlam. Michaels was said to be very pissed off about this and this is what lead to the over the top selling. Noticeable the next night on Raw, Shawn cut a promo and took potshots at Hogan despite the fact Michaels had just pulled a Heel–Face Turn at the end of the SummerSlam match.
• Becky Lynch 2021 Survivor Series feud between Charlotte Flair had major elements. Lynch and Flair despite once being close friends, had a major falling out prior to this event and are not on speaking terms. The issue became prominent when a scripted segment between the two went south when Flair went off script. Flair had intentionally dropped the belt to the ground despite the fact she was supposed to hand it to Lynch in the segment. The aftermath of this botched segment lead to a real backstage argument between the two and Flair was said to have been escorted out of the building.
• Jon Moxley doesn't exactly speak fondly of Brock Lesnar. Moxley claimed that during the weekend of WrestleMania 32, when he tried to talk about doing spots for the match, Lesnar would not listen to any of his ideas he had thought of^note After seeing some of the ideas he's come up with since leaving WWE Brock flatly refusing to do any of Mox's suggestions makes a lot more sense. Even more so when you remember that Brock would later do a UFC match that year so he understandably did not want to risk major injuries.. He also claimed Lesnar never bothered to really seriously discuss or rehearse the match. Moxley also spoke of hostility with WWE executive producer Kevin Dunn in his book, though this isn't really a surprise when basically everyone in wrestling besides Vince despises Dunn.
• Chris Benoit and Kevin Sullivan is one of wrestling's most infamous examples. See, Sullivan booked his then-wife Woman a.k.a. Nancy in a storyline where she would have an affair with Benoit and leave Sullivan for him. To sell the storyline, Nancy and Benoit were instructed to spend time together in public, including sharing motel rooms. This led to them falling in love for real and having an actual affair that saw Nancy legitimately leave Sullivan for Benoit. This ignited a lot of tension and bad blood between Benoit and Sullivan, and while Sullivan has tried to deny it by claiming he had no hard feelings for what happened and that he respected Benoit's abilities, several other wrestlers that were in WCW during that time confirm that the two more-or-less hated each other. The general agreement is that Sullivan becoming head booker of WCW again is one of the main reasons why Benoit decided to jump ship to the then-WWF with the rest of the Radicalz. Considering Benoit and Nancy's eventual fates, the entire saga has gone from hilarious to Harsher in Hindsight.
• The infamous Matt Hardy / Lita / Edge Love Triangle, where Lita had an almost year-long Real Life affair with Matt's Real Life best friend Edge behind his back while he was out with an injury. Matt was understandably furious when he found out, started mouthing off about it on his blog, which eventually got him legitimately fired. A guilt-ridden Lita and Edge then agreed to make it into a Worked Shoot-storyline so Matt could have his job back. While Matt forgave Lita within the year and they made attempts to restore their relationship before realizing it just wasn't going to work out, the same could not be same for his friendship with Edge, with the heat between them lasting for years. While they did eventually become friends again, by all accounts they're nowhere near as close as they used to be, and probably never will be again.
  • In addition to that, this caused a falling out between Edge and Jeff Hardy as well, by both their admissions. Edge confirmed on a podcast with Pete Rosenberg that there was a "cold period" between them before they managed to work out their differences and become friends again.
• Low Ki is from the same generation of indy talent as CM Punk, Bryan Danielson, Samoa Joe, and AJ Styles, and arguably just as talented as all of them. However, he never became as big as any of them because for all his talent, he was extremely difficult to work with; things always had to be done his way (not to mention he is infamous for being very stiff in the ring), and he frequently refused to do the job, even when it made sense to everyone but him, unless it was to someone he liked (and even that still had 50/50 chances of complaints). Several people, most notably Jim Cornette, have called him out on it, but he refused to change and this reputation has stuck with him for the rest of his career, leading to him being effectively blackballed from nearly every major wrestling promotion in the world.
• It's well known that Britt Baker doesn't get along with fellow AEW wrestler, Thunder Rosa. Baker has mocked Rosa for comparing their "professional" rivalry to that of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and The Rock, and later questioned Rosa for why her back injury would prevent her from simply showing up for work if she's the woman's champion. Thunder Rosa has stated in no uncertain terms that she has no intentions to make amends with Baker.
• To say that Sammy Guevara is polarizing would be an understatement and that is also the case backstage as his backstage beef with Andrade El Idolo is any indication. While details are still somewhat murky, what is known is that Andrade and Sammy got into a real life fight caused by Andrade having problem's with Sammy's ego, which caused the former to be suspended for months. This combined with the below CM Punk incident really made people wonder if there was any sort of cohesion backstage in AEW for a time.
• If the fallout from All Out 2022 is any indication, it seems that CM Punk can still attract drama with the guys backstage, as in the media scrum following the PPV, he insulted Kenny Omega, The Young Bucks, Adam Page, and Colt Cabana among others all while Tony Khan was right next to him. The Elite didn't take kindly to this, and it escalated into an actual backstage brawl between Kenny, Matt, and Nick vs Punk (with trainer and real life friend Ace Steel backing him up). Despite all of them being big names and champions (Punk was world champion, The Elite were trios champions), this fight caused them all to be suspended and stripped of their titles^note Punk tore his triceps during his match earlier that night and would be out for 6 months, so he would have had to give up the title regardless, although unlike previous times where a champion was injured and they had an interim champion in the meantime, this time Punk was stripped of the title for real, and time will tell if they can sort their differences out. Omega and the Bucks have since returned to TV (Page never left), Ace Steel was released but later secretly reinstated by Khan, and Punk was eventually let back into the promotion.
  • Speaking of Colt Cabana, when CM Punk debuted in 2021, the two former friends were still not on good terms, and while they haven't made it public, it's no secret they aren't willing to work with each other anytime soon. Cabana's closeness to The Elite likely didn't help matters, which likely factored in to the above-mentioned brawl (along with a report from journalist Dave Meltzer that Punk had Cabana taken off TV, which was later proven to be not true).
  • The issue started when during a Dynamite show heading into AEW's ppv Double or nothing, Adam Page in a promo made accusations of Punk not really supporting workers rights to a noticeably confused Punk. When Punk talked to Page backstage and asked what that was about, Page stated that he knows Punk had gotten Colt demoted even though as pointed out above and confirmed by Tony, Punk had nothing to do with Colt being off TV. This angered Punk and when AEW tried to make him and Page sort out their difference, Punk felt Page wasn't sorry at all for what he said. At Double or Nothing Punk claimed that Page during their match slapped him hard on his mouth thus chipping his tooth. This made Punk unsure if Page was shooting on him in the match.
  • During the summer prior to All Out 22, The Elite had noticeable taken pot shots at Punk on their after shows. They also mocked Punk when they had returned in November and had a match in Chicago.
  • Punk recently took a pot shot at Jericho in his Instagram post before deleting it, where he called Jericho "A liar and a stooge". It is clear there are major issues between Punk and Jericho. Indeed as even as far back 2014, Jericho wanted Punk on his podcast to discuss his issues, but Punk instead stated in the Colt Cabana podcast (the same one that lead between their own falling out) he did not trust Jericho. Considering that later on, in the lawsuit battle between Punk and WWE's doctor, it was revealed the doctor was mocking Punk in a group text that included Jericho, Punk was probably right not to trust him. Not help that Meltzer who was friends with Jericho, had been reporting that Jericho stated he would make sure Punk would not be allowed back.
  • Punk and Andrade would eventually return to AEW, however they would be put on the company's new B-Show Collision which was seemingly made a) to ensure the massively ballooning roster had stuff to do that wasn't dark matches with local guys on Dark and b) to keep the likes of Punk and Andrade away from the guys they feuded with before and to ensure they wouldn't meet each other backstage again.
  • Unfortunately, it seems like the powder keg was destined to explode again when Punk took creative control of Collision, banning people who have made even light criticism of him or seem to be involved with the Elite, like Ryan Nemeth who made a comment about Punk being the "softest man alive" on Twitter after a Punk called the Elite soft in his return promo or Christopher Daniels, the man in charge of the HR department at AEW. Eventually, Punk got into a conflict with Jack Perry over a dangerous bump onto a car windshield.^*In wrestling, tempered glass is typically used instead of pane glass, as it's more durable and shatters into smaller, rounder pieces, thus lessening the risk of wrestlers being hurt. Windshield glass is laminated, and is designed to safely buckle and crack in case a body hits it with momentum. Punk explicitly forbade Perry to do the spot on Collision, allegedly accusing him of trying to perform this stunt to get himself some time off-this was also after several other people including Tony Schiavone had tried to talk Perry out of doing the stunt but had refused to listen thus they went to Punk to try and talk Perry out of doing it. A few weeks later, Perry took a bump on a real glass windshield during his match with HOOK at All Out 2023 and called Punk out live on camera saying "It was real glass, cry me a river". After the match, Punk and Jack got into a brawl. reports vary on who caused this or what completely happened but one rumor was that the brawl caused some monitors to fall on Tony Khan. Samoa Joe managed to break them up, and Perry was sent home, while Punk was said to yell and even lunge at Tony backstage after his match with Joe and elected to leave the arena and not participate in a media scrum. The incident led to Perry being suspended and Punk being fired from AEW, with Ace Steel also being released some time later. Shortly thereafter, Dave Meltzer (who had heat with Punk after the latter called him a rumor-spreading stooge for the Elite in the aforementioned media scrum) would release many backstage reports indicating that Punk's abrasive backstage personality caused him to get in confrontations with not just the Elite and Perry but several other wrestlers including Chris Jericho and Jon Moxley—he was also the one who reported that Punk had "lunged" at Tony Khan. The first Collision after Punk was fired saw the Young Bucks appear and take a "victory lap" around the ring after the show went off the air, indicating the drama hadn't gone away at all.
  • And speaking of the "dirt sheets", Punk previously had issues with Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, not just because he kept pushing the narrative that Punk got Cabana demoted (even after Tony kept insisting that wasn't the case) but also because before Punk returned, Meltzer had published a story on his internet forum saying Punk got his lawyer involved because Punk didn't wont to work a match where Moxley had squashed him in three minutes before they would do the rematch at All Out two weeks later-painting Punk as if he refused to comply with losing. However Punk (in the same Instagram story where he called Jericho a stooge) pointed out that he got his lawyer involved because he (Punk) wasn't medically cleared at the time Tony wanted him to work the match. Meltzer would later admit he did know that Punk wasn't medically cleared at the time when he posted the story. However, the heat really didn't become public knowledge until the All Out media scrum, where Punk outright called the Observer and Meltzer liars who spread false rumors about him in order to stay in the Elite's good graces (he never named names, but it was obvious who he was referring to). Meltzer has responded in kind between Punk's departure from AEW and return to WWE, publishing back stage stories presenting Punk as a locker room cancer who no one liked despite the fact many wrestlers from FTR, Jade Cargil, Wardlow, Ricky Stark, and Power House Hobbs all speaking positively about him.
  • Tying into above into the All In 2023 show there had been several issues before hand heading into the show such as the fact Punk and The Elite were supposed to have a sit down meeting to finally air out their differences only for the Elite to pull out at the very last minute. Before the show for All In, Punk ran into travel issues where his ride was not available despite being told they would be there. When Punk called the listed number for his transportation it was a inactive number. Thus leaving Punk having to try and find his on way around town into the stadium. Said travel transportation agent had noticeable liked tweets that had bad mouth Punk and called himself on his twitter page a "Young Bucks stand in". This further tensions and the idea that people were trying to cause Punk issues. Punk returned to WWE at Survivor Series 2023, which should put all of this to rest for the time being...
  • Or maybe not, as Punk finally broke his silence on the matter in an April 2024 interview on The MMA Hour podcast where he explained what happened and buried AEW, The Bucks, and Tony Khan; saying that AEW "isn't a real business" because Khan doesn't even care if his company is profitable.^note Estimates vary on exactly how not profitable AEW is (and it's a private company so exact figures aren't available), but even the most optimistic ones figure an 8 figure loss over the course of the year, and their business has been trending down since the first Punk incident back in 2022 AEW responded with the bizarre and frankly stupid decision to air the security cam footage of the fight on Dynamite (here's a clip) the following week as part of a Bucks-FTR angle, which accomplished nothing other than giving Punk credibility as the events in the video were exactly as he described them in the interview. Perry returned to AEW a couple weeks later, to zero reaction from the crowd.
• 2 Cold Scorpio had alleged beef with Ric Flair during the mid-'90s which bled over to having beef with Hawk (who was friends with Flair). This caused Hawk and Scorpio to get into a real life fight inside a bus, leading to another fight the next day and Scorpio almost deciding to murder Hawk in retaliation. If it wasn't for Chris Benoit talking him down, he could have gone through with it. What makes the story even crazier? Both incidents took place during WCW's controversial Collision in Korea event in North Korea.
• Sting and the Ultimate Warrior broke into the wrestling business together and initially worked as a tag team known as the Freedom Fighters and later the Blade Runners. When asked about his time with Warrior at his retirement media scrum, Sting noted it was good they went their separate ways because they would have “literally” killed each other. Warrior backed this up while he was alive, having said in interviews that he and Sting had a "clash of personalities".

Europe

• Saraya and Ricky Knight were likewise black balled by several of their former trainees. Saraya in particular was accused of stiffing them if she was having a bad day or just "felt like it", as well as giving Groin Attacks to male trainees. A fourteen-year-old female trainee was also advised to dress up like a school girl to appeal to a booker's fetishes. Charlie Morgan likewise revealed she was caught kissing another girl while still closeted, and outed in front of the entire training school to be laughed at.
• Raven Creed was anonymously accused in 2020 of bullying trainees in the Phoenix Wrestling school - despite her outspoken criticism of the abuse she'd suffered in the past. The report just said "a female wrestler", but there were enough specifics to make it obvious who it was referring to.
• Lee Cahalane - promoter of Celtic Championship Wrestling in Ireland - was not a popular man.
  • Raven Creed confessed in 2019 that as soon as she had turned eighteen, Lee tried to kiss her in a nightclub. Months later when she was the victim of a drink being spiked, Lee tried to kiss her again while she was barely conscious. Her boyfriend Matt Skylar threatened Lee to never do that again, and was punished by not being booked for six months.
  • LJ Cleary and Valkyrie (now better known as Lyra Valkyria of NXT) eventually stopped working for CCW after Lee refused to pay them for their matches (they initially had travel costs covered, but asked for actual payment after they'd had more bookings). Lee eventually granted this but told Raven Creed to stiff Valkyrie in retaliation for this. He had only booked Valkyrie in the first place in the hopes of sleeping with her, despite him being in his late 20s and her just being 18.
  • Darren Burns referred to the promotion as "a cancer to Irish wrestling" and only wrestled there because it was too far for him to travel to train at other promotions.
  • Katey Harvey was constantly clashing with Lee, first for being booked in a degrading 'Hairspray on a Pole' match that she's embarrassed of to this day. Then for unsafe working conditions - she publicly denounced them when Lorcan Wood got a broken jaw thanks to his inexperienced opponent. She continued working for them for a few more years, but eventually stopped after a show where a botch led to an opponent getting a broken neck.
  • Marion Armstrong claims he witnessed the first attempted molesting of Raven Creed, and Lee then tried to kiss him to cover it up. The last straw for him was a debacle of a press conference to promote a show where only six people turned up. After said show, he took the CCW roster with him and set up a new promotion in Phoenix Wrestling.
• Bobby Calloway didn't reveal the name, but he admitted to having an exhausting series of matches with another wrestler who worked extremely stiff and would occasionally behave unprofessionally in the ring. He was also pressured into doing spots he wasn't comfortable with and got a concussion in the middle of one match simply because the other guy got Lost in Character and legitimately punched him in the side of the head. Bobby also admitted to being bullied by several other workers, including an authority figure, who made homophobic and transphobic taunts and joked that he should commit suicide (unbeknownst to them, he attempted it a few weeks afterwards). This had a knock-on effect when he ended up alienating several other workers due to his deteriorating mental health.
• Jimmy Havoc and Will Ospreay had a series of legendary matches over the course of several years that put Progress Wrestling on the map, but until their last match in 2018 they butted heads over their differing ideologies of wrestling. Havoc actually noted this in 2016 after one of their matches, while also pointing out that Ospreay had legitimately broken his ribs with an unnecessarily rough knee.
• Ospreay, along with his teammates in the Swords of Essex, also had major hostility with Pollyanna. Scotty Wainwright was accused by Pollyanna of raping and abusing her, and after she opened up about it, Ospreay used his popularity and clout within British wrestling to spread rumours of her being a lying troublemaker and accusing her of bullying Bea Priestley because they'd gotten into an argument at a training session. Eventually this got to the point where he told several venues to either stop booking her or lose him, and she left the industry out of frustration of being blackballed.

Japan

• The professional turned personal rivalry between Rikidozan's proteges, the Tag Team known as BI Cannnon, eventually lead to them splitting Rikidozan's company, JWA, in two after his death, with Giant Baba going on to found All Japan Pro Wrestling and Antonio Inoki founding New Japan Pro-Wrestling. While the rivalry was no longer on set, All Japan vs New Japan became legendary in pro wrestling circles, with Super World Of Sports basing half of its programming around it when it poached both of their locker rooms to fill its own locker rooms.
• While not the main factor (that might be the unfortunate story of Plum Mariko), a split right down the locker room caused by boxer Rumi Kazama and The Beauty Pair's Jackie Sato almost certainly contributed to JWP's inability to effectively compete with All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling. The difference in philosophy between Kazama and Sato was the driving force of the divide, as Kazama derided Sato as an "entertainer" rather than a "wrestler", but the breaking point came when Sato shot on Shinobu Kandori, who had called Sato a sloppy wrestler after Sato injured Kandori. After being deliberately injured again by Sato, Kandori warned the staff not to book her against Sato again, but they let it happen, so Kandori beat Sato into retirement before herself leaving pro wrestling for five years to try Mixed Martial Arts (see Tiger Mask below). She eventually became the ace of shoot style promotion and JWP breakway LLPW.
• Riki Choshu is an infamous locker room terror who has stories of hostility with basically everybody, especially wrestlers from combat sports backgrounds or with shoot wrestling training, which has led people to speculate that Choshu, a former Olympic wrestler, feels threatened every time he has to work with someone capable to hold his own against him (others believe it all comes from Choshu having once got his ass kicked by Karl Gotch for being a young punk). Osamu Nishimura even blamed his testicular cancer on the stresses of working under Choshu as booker. Another popular fact is that Akira Maeda, himself a notorious locker room terror, shot on Choshu in his final New Japan Pro-Wrestling match as a parting gift before leaving the company (though Maeda denies it, claiming Choshu simply missed his cue and failed to protect).
• Akira Maeda and Satoru Sayama (also known as "First" Tiger Mask) had a famously strained relationship regarding money, card positions and victories that eventually left the locker room and was brought in front of Universal Wrestling Federation fans when Maeda shot on Sayama during a match by kicking him below the belt and Sayama responded in kind. This lead to the dissolution of UWF as Sayama went on to found the world's first Mixed Martial Arts company, Shooto, while Maeda founded a shoot wrestling promotion that eventually became MMA in its own right, Fighting Network RINGS. Both Sayama and Maeda continued to be pains in the asses of their new business partners and locker rooms (although those weren't blameless either, especially the Shooto management, who was later busted by money crimes).
• Maeda and Yoji Anjo couldn't see each other towards the end of their time together in UWF Newborn, with Anjo having even accused him of sexual harassment.
• Minoru Suzuki was infamously difficult to work with in his youth, and he was notoriusly hostile to foreign talent. This didn't change, but rather worsened, when he moved into MMA in Pancrase, as he now had an excuse to kick people in the head when he was supposed to be helping them.
• Nobuhiko Takada and Keiji Mutoh didn't get along whenever they worked together in NJPW. The root of the heat was that Takada and the rest of the shoot-style cadre had been Mutoh's superiors in the NJPW Dojo, and the latter described them as crazy people who only wanted to beat everybody up. Although the group left, Mutoh retained all the resentment when he became an established star, so he and the returning Takada had many a brawl. They apparently reconciled in Takada's retirement, after which they went to work together in Fighting Opera HUSTLE (although still playing opposite characters, literally given its "Opera" status).
• Kazushi Sakuraba accused Kiyoshi Tamura of being abusive to him back when he was Saku's superior in the UWF-i dojo, while Tamura later accused Tatsuo Nakano of the same thing towards himself.
• Takao Omori was infamous for being hard to get along with in All Japan Pro Wrestling, but it only worsened in Pro Wrestling NOAH. His main enemy was Masahito Kakihara, whom Omori often tried to stiff out on their matches; Kakihara eventually got tired of it, and when they met in the ring during NOAH's first show, he gave Omori a savage body kick that left Takao having to sit out of the match for minutes. Omori would be fired from NOAH some years later when chairman Mitsuharu Misawa got similarly fed of him.
• Hiroshi Tanahashi hasn't exactly made his feeling of betrayal for Katsuyori Shibata's departure to form Big Mouth Loud, where he would bash New Japan Pro-Wrestling while Tanahashi was trying to save it, or his distaste for Shibata's stiff style of wrestling a secret. While the two might not be professional enough to keep their mouths shut, it hasn't lead to any locker room fights or match breakdowns; they do business together well enough.
• Rumoredly, Akebono and Big Daddy Voodoo had heat in the AJPW locker room. Some claim the former was jealous that BDV could take his place as the company's big man, while others suspect the latter's reputation of being difficult to work with had something to do. It is also believed Akebono pressed AJPW into not booking Big Daddy anymore.
• Yoshiko admitted that she and Act Yasukawa didn't get along after she turned the latter's shot at the World Of STARDOM into a shoot so ugly Kyoko Kimura had to throw in the towel to prevent a repeat of Kandori and Sato. This in turn lead to animosity among World Wonder Ring ST★RDOM's owners, as their inability to come to a consensus on how to punish Yoshiko split the company in two, Nanae Takahashi forming SEAdLINNG with her half. Nanae thrashed Yoshiko in the SEAdLINNG ring... before becoming her Tag Team partner and then pushing YOSHIKO as the singles champion, as she had in STARDOM.

Mexico

• Konnan already had some bad run-ins with Mil Máscaras, including a locker room brawl after being hit with a shoe by Máscaras during an argument Konnan wasn't even a part of, and an incident during a two-out-of-three-falls match in which a fall was cut short after Máscaras shot on Konnan and then told the referee Konnan had submitted. After Konnan became a breakout star in CMLL and became more familiar with the booking and promoting sides of lucha libre, he developed an even stronger dislike of Máscaras for his absolute refusal to job to pretty much anyone up to and including multiple opponents at once. However, as Konnan's career wound down, Máscaras approached him and mended their relationship.
• Juventud Guerrera has publicly accused Konnan of trying to monopolize Mexico's lucha libre industry and of defecating in his bag; the latter caused a fight that had to be stopped by Jack Evans when Guerrera grabbed a chair. Konnan confirmed the bag-shitting incident, but blamed Sean Waltman for it and said he didn't stop it because he found it funny.
• Místico and Alberto Del Rio aren't modest about their mutual hostility, which has lasted all the way through their respective runs in WWE and AAA. It's known that one backstage confrontation ended with one of Místico's entourage threatening Del Rio with a gun, and in the August 19, 2013 episode of WWE Raw, a match between the two ended with Del Rio shooting on Místico for calling a referee stoppage due to a dislocated finger.
• Sexy Star and Ayako Hamada have a very strange relationship relating to difference of opinion on lucha libre as a profession, to mutual interest in the same men to competition to get acting roles in other entertainment industries. If Star is to be believed they gotten in actual fights, and for her part she admits to them not having any decisive victors despite Star being a trained boxer.

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