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I was raised in a Catholic household and taught to abhor violence, for nothing good has ever resulted from it except harm inflicted upon one’s fellow man. Yet I also grew up in the age of television, and through it discovered the World Wrestling Federation. The lessons about violence were turned on their head. I realized that violence may be wrong, that much is true, but it can also be extremely entertaining. Particularly when it involves half-naked, sweaty, muscular men hugging and pretend-slapping each other in the middle of a square ring.

Like most kids my age—especially in my country, where the WWF was practically the only game in town—Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior defined professional wrestling. We took our vitamins, prayed to Jesus, and comically flexed our non-existent muscles in unison with our musclebound heroes. But we discovered wrestling at a turning point. Hogan, Warrior, and their cartoonish gimmicks were on the way out. In their place came a new generation of heroes—perhaps smaller and less physically imposing, often still weighed down by over-the-top gimmicks, but with a sharper edge. What do you mean you still liked Hulk Hogan? That goody-two-shoes was boring. These new wrestlers weren’t exactly heroic most of the time, but they were fresh, rebellious, and—whether we admitted it or not—they became our heroes.

In my circle of friends, there’s a couple of wrestlers who are considered the cream of the crop. You were either a fan of one or the other. Before we grew up and fought each other based on our politics, we first learned how to divide ourselves based on whether you like Bret “The Hitman” Hart or “The Heartbreak Kid” Shawn Michaels.

Bret Hart was the straight-shooting, no-nonsense kind of wrestler. He wasn’t much for talking; he let his technical skills do the speaking. And the message was always the same: he would systematically wear you down, targeting a single body part until it gave way. True to his name, he was a Hitman who knew exactly where to strike. He was the ‘Excellence of Execution’—the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be.

Shawn Michaels was a different story. Though every bit as athletic and skilled as Bret Hart, his moveset and persona couldn’t have been further from The Hitman’s. The Heartbreak Kid was cocky, flashy—the very definition of flamboyant. He was the perfect foil to Hart, and as the world later learned when the curtain was pulled back on the wrestling industry, the animosity between them felt so real because it was real. These two men fucking hated each other.

Of course, this was my era as a wrestling fan. It was a time that soon evolved into the even more rebellious ‘Attitude Era,’ driven by the likes of Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H, and a parade of characters who thumbed their noses at authority and societal norms. For fans now nursing aching backs and balance issues, this was the peak of professional wrestling—its most audacious phase, brushing close to reality without ever fully surrendering the magic. Back then, the artificiality of wrestling was an open secret, one we could safely tuck away in the back of our minds. This was before the Internet, social media, and the obsession with personal lives shoved that artificiality in our faces, making suspension of disbelief not just difficult, but almost impossible.