What if The Rock had never left WWE?

#1 The Rock vs. HBK

The Rock and Shawn Michaels just missed each other more than once.

One of the all-time great dream rivalries that WWE fans narrowly missed out on was The Rock vs. Shawn Michaels. These two had an overlapping year and a half on the main roster upon young Rocky Maivia’s debut. HBK was firmly planted at the main event level at the time, though, and so the two didn’t have a natural time to cross.

Michaels retired for the first time coming out of WrestleMania 14 in 1998; The Rock would win his first world title in November of that year. The two crossed over a bit again in 2002, but Michaels’s comeback match against Triple H came on the same night The Rock lost his world title to Brock Lesnar, in so doing taking another big step toward part-time status.

Interestingly, Michaels resumed his career for most of the next eight and a half years, before he retired again at WrestleMania 26, only for The Rock to make a shocking return to the WWE fold one year later.

These two top-tier stars narrowly missed one another time and again. Had The Rock been with WWE through Michaels’s return to the company, there’s little doubt WWE would have built to this dream match, likely as not for a WrestleMania.