The Joy of Six: inside six enduring sporting feuds
Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank confronted one another at the contract signing for their 1990 middleweight fight, shown live on ITV, and a feature published on 21 September 2026 surveys six high-profile sporting grudges spanning boxing, Formula One, football management, tennis, cricket and snooker.
The piece assembles episodes of long-standing personal animosity and public conflict, from ring fights and on-track disputes to press-room barbs and off-field brawls. It highlights the intensity of individual confrontations and records where those clashes spilled into the public eye, citing direct quotes and defining moments for each pairing. The six rivalries examined are Chris Eubank v Nigel Benn, Nelson Piquet v Nigel Mansell, Pep Guardiola v José Mourinho, Serena Williams v Maria Sharapova, Ian Botham v Ian Chappell, and Alex Higgins v Cliff Thorburn.
On boxing, the feature recounts how Benn declared “I personally do hate him” at the contract signing for the 1990 middleweight fight and how Eubank, who would not look at his opponent, demanded “some parliamentary procedure.” It describes fight night when Eubank rose from a knockdown in the eighth to stop Benn in the ninth to take the WBO title, and it notes their 1993 rematch drew 43,000 to Old Trafford and 16.5 million UK television viewers before ending in a draw. The article records that the pair have reconciled and fallen out repeatedly since that final in-ring meeting.
In Formula One, the narrative recalls Nelson Piquet’s insults – including calling Ayrton Senna “a São Paulo taxi driver” – and his denigration of teammate Nigel Mansell as “an uneducated blockhead” and comments about Mansell’s “stupid and ugly wife.” It says both drivers focused on their intra-team battles during 1986 to such an extent that Alain Prost won the drivers’ championship, and that in 1987 Mansell won six races to Piquet’s three while Piquet secured his third world title by frequent podium finishes. The feature adds that bridges were later built in retirement and quotes Piquet: “I should have won in 86, he should have won in 87.”
The Guardiola–Mourinho section traces their falling-out to Mourinho’s arrival at Real Madrid in 2010 after four years working at Barcelona with Guardiola, and it reproduces Mourinho’s 2011 jibe: “I hope one day he has the chance of winning a brilliant, clean championship with no scandal,” accusing Uefa of favouring Guardiola. The piece records other barbs, including Mourinho’s comment that Guardiola’s baldness showed he “doesn’t enjoy football,” and Guardiola’s retort calling Mourinho “the fucking boss” of the press room and adding: “I try to learn from José on the pitch, but I prefer to learn as little as possible from him off the pitch.” It notes Barcelona won the majority of head-to-head encounters, including a 5-0 league defeat of Madrid, that Real Madrid took La Liga in 2012 with 100 points, Guardiola stepped away from management for a year, and Mourinho left Madrid in 2013; the article also records that the feud has mellowed in subsequent years and that a highly anticipated Manchester rematch failed to ignite, despite Mourinho’s complaints about City’s “financial sharks” and unfair league titles.
On tennis, the feature quotes Maria Sharapova’s line from her autobiography: “I think Serena hated me for being the skinny kid who beat her,” referencing Sharapova’s 2004 Wimbledon final victory at 17. It sets out the head-to-head ledger, noting Williams then won the next 19 matches to produce a 20-2 win–loss record, and it cites reported personal entanglements involving the same player, Grigor Dimitrov. The article reproduces Williams’s 2013 comment: “Hey, if she wants to be with the guy with a black heart, go for it,” and Williams calling Sharapova “so boring,” alongside Sharapova’s counter: “If she wants to talk about something personal, maybe she should talk about her relationship and her boyfriend that was married and is getting a divorce.” It closes the section by recording that the two have become friends in retirement and that Sharapova asked Williams to induct her into the tennis hall of fame in 2025.
Two long-running feuds outside the most televised arenas are also chronicled. The Botham–Chappell story is traced to a bar brawl in Melbourne in 1977, with Botham’s version that he punched Ian Chappell and Chappell’s version that a young Botham pushed him off a chair and threatened him with a glass; the feature says the pair traded insults on the field and elsewhere, reached a boiling point during the 2010-11 Ashes when they had to be restrained in a car park, and notes that a television documentary, The Longest Feud: Chappell v Botham, aired three years ago and left hostilities unresolved, with Chappell calling Botham “a coward” and Botham labelling Chappell “sad and lonely.” The Higgins–Thorburn account records that Alex Higgins accused many opponents of hating him – quoting Steve Davis (“I hate him”), Dennis Taylor (“I’ll have you shot”) and Stephen Hendry (“Up your arse, you [c-word]”) – but reserved the fiercest animosity for Cliff Thorburn, recalling a first-day-in-England match that ended with Thorburn “at the top of the stairs with a ball in his hand about to throw it at me.” It relates Higgins’s 1980 world championship final loss after leading 9-5 to lose 18-16, Thorburn’s attack on Higgins at the 1983 Irish Open when he “lamped Higgins and kicked him in the groin” after being told Higgins was “a Canadian [c-bomb] who is shit at snooker,” Higgins’s later accusation that Thorburn used “bags of white powder,” and the 2009 moment in which Thorburn, upset by Higgins’s diminished state, shed a tear and embraced him during a legends match a year before Higgins’s death.
Several of the feuds covered have shifted tone with time: Piquet and Mansell made conciliatory appearances together in retirement and Piquet conceded the title-year sequence with “I should have won in 86, he should have won in 87,” Eubank and Benn have reconciled and fallen out on multiple occasions, Mourinho and Guardiola’s hostility has softened in later years, and Sharapova and Williams have become friends in retirement with Sharapova requesting Williams induct her into the tennis hall of fame in 2025.