Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, so it’s time we had a serious, thematically appropriate conversation instead of me just bombarding Kazuchika Okada’s Twitter with pleas to be my forever Valentine. This week, we want to know who your favorite on-screen wrestling couple of all time is.
This is actually a harder one for me, mostly because wrestling couples aren’t really built to last. They’re more often just a catalyst for betrayal, so you’re never really left with anything solid. Unfortunately, another big standout is how often the women get blamed for a break up, or a loss, or put into physical jeopardy kinda just because. Brooke Tessmacher broke up Bully Ray’s marriage to Brooke Hogan, then she was blamed for a loss that tore Aces & Eights apart (even though it was the hubris of Bully Ray that was their ultimate undoing). Chris Sabin and Velvet Sky had a beautiful relationship until they fought and he put her in a cage because…okay, maybe TNA examples are the worst examples. Of anything. Ever. And I’m saying this in a world where Lita exists.
Even the classic couples, like Macho Man and Elizabeth, were hugely problematic. To some, they were the pinnacle of romance, but he was always pushing her out of the way, denying her the chance to speak, and then, you know, there was that little snafu with Hogan that nobody really remembers.
I think the couples that have resonated the most are the ones that show any kind of genuine affection towards each other. A recent example is Dolph Ziggler and A.J. Yes, it ended weirdly for incredibly stupid reasons, but it was so refreshing. Daniel Bryan, as beloved as he is, was an emotionally abusive, manipulative asshole. CM Punk was the greasy bad boy who did nothing to help dissuade the audience from believing that A.J. was a psycho slut. Kane was Kane. John Cena did everything short of standing in the middle of the ring pointing at A.J. and shouting WHAT, ARE YOU ON YOUR PERIOD OR SOMETHING?
While she was framed as a mentally unstable whore, A.J. was reeling from being constantly undermined, bouncing from one terrible decision to the next, just trying to find someone to be nice to her. That was Dolph. We went from Cena being a walking GET A LOAD OF THIS GUY meme about his girlfriend, to the glory of Team Rocket: matching shirts, cuddling by the fire, and the feeling that they were genuinely into each other. It’s amazing (read: heartbreaking) how simply being nice to a woman on screen can be so out of the ordinary, but so memorable.
That kind of thinking leads to my actual current favorite wrestling couple: Triple H and Stephanie McMahon. I know we’re supposed to hate the Authority, but it’s really hard to hate the Big Bad when all they do is say logical things, make googly eyes at each other over violence they instigated, and let Seth Rollins wrestle. They’re one part Happy to Be With Each Other, and one part Happy to Be There, and even a fraction of one of those is more than enough to win me over.
The real answer, of course, is this couple:
J&J 4EVER
So what say you? Were you super into Marc Mero and Sable? Edge and Lita? Colonel Parker and Sherri? The sexual subtext between three of the Four Horsemen? Let us know what’s up in the comments below:
