Sports Rivalries by helitzur

The 150th occurrence of the most frequently played rivalry in college football history took place in Yankee Stadium in 2014 between which two Patriot League opponents?

Before American Pharaoh finally broke horse racing's decades-long run without a Triple Crown winner in 2015, the last occurrence happened when these two horses battled each other to the wire in all three races, with the winner edging out his rival by increasingly slim margins in each race. Name both horses.

These two golf rivals faced each other in "The Duel in the Sun" at an unusually non-overcast British Open in 1977. A Grantland analysis in 2011 showed that relative to the rest of the field, two of the ten most dominant major tournament performances by any player in the previous 50 years both occurred in that same tournament, where the 2nd-place finisher still finished 10 strokes ahead of the rest of the field. Name both players.

These two players were the only ones to met in three consecutive men's finals at Wimbledon in the entire 20th century. They alternated wins, with a 5-set classic in the third one, the 1990 Final. Name the two players.

Swimming's "Race of the Century" occurred in the 2004 Olympics men's 200m freestyle final, where Michael Phelps had to settle for bronze as these two rivals battled for the gold. Name these two swimmers: the Australian who won gold, and the Dutchman who settled for silver after having beaten that same rival in the same event final four years earlier.

The Williams sisters will be remembered as each other's greatest rivals, with Serena holding a 9-5 edge in their 14 Grand Slam meetings. Identify BOTH of their greatest NON-sibling rivals from these clues (these are two separate answers, not the same player).

Venus had 5 wins in 9 major tournament clashes with this opponent. Their last matchup was in the 2005 Wimbledon final, an all-time classic won by Venus 9-7 in the 3rd set.

Serena had a losing record of 3-4 in majors against this opponent, who beat Serena in 3 consecutive Grand Slams in 2007 before surprisingly retiring just prior to the 2008 French Open at the age of 25. (edited at 12:12 pm, September 13, 2015 (PDT))

The Celtics and 76ers met in three straight NBA Eastern Conference Finals in the early 1980s, when this Philadelphia guard became known as "The Boston Strangler" for his heroic performances, including 34 points in Philadelphia's Game 7 win in Boston in 1982. A 2-time All Star whose career was cut short by injuries, his legacy has been championed by Charles Barkley, who frequently describes this player as "the best teammate I ever played with."

Barcelona vs Real Madrid is known to soccer fans worldwide as "El Clasico," but historic rivals River Plate and Boca Juniors contest "El Superclasico" multiple times each year in which CITY?

These two middleweights contested one of boxing's all-time fiercest rivalries three times in championship bouts over a 21-month period from 1946-1948, with each fight ending in a knockout. Name both fighters.

Al Davis picked an offensive lineman in the first round of the 1967 AFL draft with a specific matchup in mind: to neutralize the dominant defensive tackle of the Raiders' arch-rival Chiefs. Name these two players who clashed numerous times on the field over the next 8 years, one who went on to lead the NFL Players Association for 25 years until his death, and the other whose name is attached to the annual award for the best defensive player in the Football Championship Series division of college football.

As of 2015, the all-time most common matchup in men's basketball NCAA Tournament history is the 8 games between Kentucky and this team. None of those games occurred in the Final Four, so the most prominent of them was probably the 2003 Elite Eight, when #1 seed UK was upset after having won 26 games in a row. The other team's star, a first-team All-American, went for a triple-double in that game. Name the team.

Perhaps the most frequently contested matchup between a pitcher and batter who are both in the Hall of Fame (incomplete early MLB records make this difficult to ascertain with 100% certainty) was the over 300 plate appearances where these two superstars faced each other. Their careers overlapped almost entirely between the early 1940s to early-mid 1960s, with both playing in the National League for their whole careers. The hitter had the significant upper-hand with an OPS of over 1.000 in their matchups, even though the lefty-lefty split should've favored the pitcher in theory. Name both of these players.