By Charlotte Wilder
You may recall, if you are a frequent visitor to the FOX Sports app (which you should be), that on Tuesday I wrote about the best sports beef of last weekend.
I loved watching all the dumb fights unfold. It was the most normal sports thing that has happened in sports in six months.
So when my dear colleague and friend Mark Titus suggested we come up with our Top Five Sports Beefs of all time, I jumped at the chance. Few things delight me more than discussing other people’s messy business, and the sports world has provided lots of juicy drama to choose from.
Let’s start with…
5. Titus: Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Vince McMahon
Top Sports Beefs: 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin vs. Vince McMahon
Mark makes a great point here — this was the first sports beef that made him realize people hated their bosses.
When you’re little, people tell you to respect authority, to be polite, etc. And yet here was Stone Cold, coming out swinging against Vince McMahon on Monday nights, only to reappear the next week without having lost his job.
To quote Mark, "I love that beef because — it just made me realize wrestling is awesome."
You may notice that there is no video of what I deemed the fifth best sports beef of all time. That’s because I’m a moron and forgot to say it, which would’ve been Aqib Talib vs. Micahel Crabtree with the ongoing chain snatching.
But it’s 2020 and my brain has turned to oatmeal.
4. Wilder: Baker Mayfield vs. Hue Jackson
Top Sports Beefs: Browns QB Baker Mayfield vs. Hue Jackson
I realize that this isn’t the flashiest beef of all time, but it’s still one of my favorites. Mostly because anything involving the Browns’ failures delights me — not because I hate the team, but because I love it. Cleveland’s inability to get it together is beyond endearing and deeply relatable.
As Mark and I say in the clip, though ... Baker maybe needs to pick his spots a bit more. When you beef with everyone all the time, it’s hard to take the fights seriously.
Yet his vendetta against Hue Jackson, who blamed his own firing on Mayfield’s poor performance, was one of Mayfield’s first and finest ongoing petty wars. So it snags my No. 4 spot.
Apologies to Bengals fans.
4. Titus: Robin Lopez vs. Mascots
Top Sports Beefs: Robin Lopez vs. NBA Mascots
Mark said, "Anytime mascots and athletes get into it...it’s something I could not get enough of as a child. It was so funny to me. It continues to be funny."
He also told a story I wasn’t aware of but that is my new favorite — the Orlando Magic’s mascot held up a sign before a game that said "Hey Robin, smile." So Lopez smiles.
Then the mascot pulls the sign down and it says "....if you farted."
We truly love to see it.
3. Wilder: Pedro Martinez vs. Don Zimmer
Top Sports Beefs: Pedro Martinez vs Don Zimmer
Remember when Don Zimmer charged Manny Ramirez in the 2003 ALCS, and Pedro jumped in and threw Zimmer to the ground? Well, I forgot about this, but in Pedro’s memoir, he says, "All I did was help him fall faster."
Mark kind of nails it in this clip when he says that the way to win a beef is to talk really good trash afterwards.
3. Titus: Jim Boeheim vs. the town of Greensboro
Top Sports Beefs: Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim vs the City of Greensboro
Syracuse’s Boeheim was not pleased when he had to leave the grandeur of Madison Square Garden’s Big East tournament to play in Greensboro, NC when Syracuse joined the ACC.
A few years later, in 2017, the ACC tournament moved from Greensboro to Brooklyn, and Boeheim loved it. He said, "There is no value to playing in Greensboro."
The city of Greensboro fired back on Twitter, "I guess you can lose in the first round anywhere, at least it’s a quick ride home." (Editor's note: The tweet has since been deleted, which is very sad.)
Makes sense — at the time, Syracuse hadn’t won a single game in the ACC tournament.
2. Wilder: Russell Westbrook vs. Kevin Durant
Top Sports Beefs: Kevin Durant vs Russell Westbrook
I always understood why KD went to the Warriors — he wanted to win, you know? I respected it. But I also respected the fact that Russ felt abandoned, and I was highly entertained watching him troll KD for an entire season afterwards.
This is, in my opinion, the pettiest ongoing feud of the past five years.
2. Titus: Reggie Miller vs. Spike Lee
Top Sports Beefs: Reggie Miller vs. Spike Lee
Mark’s mind was once again blown as a child because he didn’t realize that Spike Lee was famous, and thought that Reggie Miller was just beefing with a random superfan.
"It felt like he was interacting with the student section at a high school level, but he was doing it at the Eastern Conference Finals ... it broke my view of how sports worked to see a player engaging with a fan over and over and over," Mark said.
This beef gave us "the choke" and "did dis dude just did dis?" A classic beef. The filet mignon of sports fights.
1. Wilder: Michael Jordan vs. anyone with a pulse who once looked at him kind of funny, except for his mom or security guard James Wozniak
Top Sports Beefs: Michael Jordan vs. Literally Everybody
If The Last Dance taught us anything, it’s that MJ holds grudges better than anyone in the entire world.
To quote Jordan, "That’s when it got personal."
1. Titus: Tonya Harding vs. Nancy Kerrigan
Top Sports Beefs: Tonya Harding vs. Nancy Kerrigan
I actually was upset when Mark said that this was his No. 1 beef, because I was mad I didn’t think of it. It’s truly the ultimate sports beef: A fight with extremely high stakes.
For Millennials around Mark’s and my age, this was a formative memory — much like realizing that Stone Cold could chirp his boss and not lose his job, this was a wake up call that not everyone plays by the rules.
Which, at the end of the day, is what a classic beef is all about.
