What happens when athletes who portray aggressive characters on TV end up living the gimmick on the Internet’s most contentious social media platform, Twitter? They get into some intense public online fights, of course!
With that in mind, here are ten instances of wrestlers from WWE, AEW, and NJPW getting into fights on Twitter. And, for the sake of variety, this will be limited to wrestler-on-wrestler Twitter beefs so that the list isn’t entirely populated with Jim Cornette.
10 Bret Hart vs. Hulk Hogan
The Hulk Hogan/Bret Hart beef goes back to at least the WrestleMania IX incident, which Hart was surprisingly cool with until Hogan refused to lay down for Hart later. In 2011, a fan on Twitter asked Hart how he felt about TNA, so he decided to talk smack about Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff, who were running the show at the time. This turned into an actual Twitter argument between Hart and Hogan, which Hart basically ended by bringing up the fact that Hogan’s son Nick seriously injured a guy in a car accident. Cold-blooded, as only a Hitman can be.
9 Matt Riddle vs. Chris Jericho
Matt Riddle does not care about getting on the bad side of any veteran wrestler. He’s infamously done it to Goldberg and Brock Lesnar, but before that, he did it to Chris Jericho. What makes this one different is that Jericho got Riddle’s attention first. The short version is this -- someone quoted a passage from Jericho’s book at Riddle and Jericho retweeted it with a “Listen and Learn, kid.” Riddle tweeted a video response where he addressed Jericho and Goldberg as well as other veteran critics Booker T and Lance Storm.
8 AJ Lee vs. Stephanie McMahon
WWE -- and Stephanie McMahon -- love to pat themselves on the back about the work they’ve done for women in sports, even back before they actually accomplished anything on WWE TV. One time Stephanie McMahon tweeted about Patricia Arquette’s Academy Awards speech about gender equality, and AJ Lee decided to call out one of her bosses on it by pointing out that WWE’s female roster gets less money and screen time than the men. This was circa the “Give Divas a Chance” movement that might have led WWE to actually take their female talent seriously.
McMahon took the criticism graciously and thanked Lee for her input, which is surprisingly reasonable for wrestling personalities on Twitter. Steph probably knew it’d be a bad look to say anything else, especially because she was using the hashtag #UseYourVoice to begin with and AJ Lee was doing just that.
7 Kevin Nash vs. Roddy Piper
Kevin Nash and Roddy Piper had a backstage incident in their WCW days that carried over to Twitter more than a decade-and-a-half later. So, in 1997 Nash and Piper had a disagreement about how a match went down in the ring and had an altercation about it backstage. In 2014, Piper talked about the incident on his podcast, Piper’s Pit. Kevin Nash caught wind of it and unleashed a profanity-laced tirade against Piper. The two never really squashed the beef, but they became much friendlier in the time leading up to Piper’s death.
6 Joey Janela vs. Enzo Amore
Joey Janela and Enzo Amore infamously got into a drunken tussle at a Blink-182 concert, but did you know that their real-life fight also extended to Twitter? Joey was pretty laissez-faire about it in typical Joey Janela fashion, while Enzo spent a whole lot of time and energy harping on it, presumably because it had been a while since people were talking about him. In the end, nothing really came of it, and people stopped talking about Enzo Amore again.
5 Kevin Owens vs. Randy Orton
There’s no way to tell if this is a work, a shoot, a worked shoot, people working themselves into a shoot, or some combination of all that, but Randy Orton decided to clown on Kevin Owens with an easy fat joke. But Owens -- one of the most savage talkers in wrestling -- decided to come at Orton with the most brutal comeback in the history of Twitter and it was a mere observation: “You vape.” All hail the new Legend Killer.
4 Tama Tonga vs. Roman Reigns
If this were an actual wrestling feud, it would have been incredible. Basically, Tama Tonga -- he of the Bullet Club’s Guerrillas of Destiny tag team -- got reported and suspended from Twitter. Tonga decided to blame Roman Reigns for it, so the pair got into a Twitter flame war.
Tonga’s an outspoken talent who doesn’t really care to be respectful of people who he feels wronged him (see: Ring of Honor trying to sneak Enzo and Big Cass into their roster), so he really came at Reigns, who didn’t seem to care that much. For what it’s worth, it did contribute to Tonga’s 2019 attempt at being a “good guy.”
3 CM Punk vs. Kurt Angle
For being tough guys, wrestlers get real thin-skinned when suffering the slightest criticism. The ever-outspoken CM Punk once sarcastically slammed his former employer TNA as an indie promotion, and so TNA loyalist Kurt Angle got real hot about it, trashing Punk and claiming he wouldn’t last 30 seconds in the ring with Angle. Punk mostly ignored this outburst, but would later make fun of Angle for claiming his account after making accusatory tweets about wrestlers stealing his moves at a WrestleMania.
2 Hulk Hogan vs. Brutus Beefcake
Forget Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano -- the most brutal breakup in wrestling was Hulk Hogan and Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake (a.k.a. Brother Bruti, a.k.a. The Booty Man, The Disciple, a.k.a. Zodiac for some reason). In 2017, Hogan and Beefcake got into an intensely personal Twitter feud involving Hogan stealing Beefcake’s ex-wife and brainwashing their daughter together. All of that is a lot, but they managed to remain civil enough since Hogan to induct Beefcake into the WWE Hall of Fame two years later.
1 Seth Rollins vs. Will Ospreay
Seth Rollins managed to turn heel on Twitter before WWE television got around to it. The Brockslayer decided to make the bold claim that WWE had the best wrestling in the world. This drew the attention of fellow annoying-on-Twitter wrestler Will Ospreay, and the two decided to go back and forth about it. And, because we live in a simulation and WWE booking exists in real life, Baron Corbin decided to get in on the Twitter feud. The two important people in this feud eventually buried the hatchet, but it’s hard not to imagine that the whole affair may have contributed to Rollins’ Monday Night Messiah gimmick.