St. Louis Battlehawks fans are looking forward to March 25, when the team will finally play its first game against the Las Vegas Vipers (formerly the Tampa Bay Vipers). Any XFL fan knows that the rivalry between the two teams is intense, despite the fact this will be their first time meeting on the field (assuming this XFL season is not marked by financial or viral catastrophe, as has been the case in years past).
Typically, a rivalry develops between two teams based on proximity (St. Louis Cardinals vs. Chicago Cubs) or as they meet again and again on the field in bitterly contested battles (see the Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys). Hard-fought wins and losses stack up on both sides. The rivalry becomes more bitter, the shit-talk more specific, the memes more self-referential. Eventually, the two sides forget how the rivalry began, and as far as everyone is concerned one team has always despised the other.
The Battlehawks seem to have managed to do almost all of that to the Vipers without the teams ever actually having played a game against each other. They were set to face off in 2020, but COVID had other ideas. It didn't matter; within weeks of the Battlehawks becoming a St. Louis XFL team in 2019, fans started creating a rivalry with the Vipers.
"The Vipers have been rapidly singled out as the Battlehawks' arch enemies, owing both to the simple nature of birds and snakes (the former find the latter to be a tasty snack) as well as their fans' apparently unorthodox bathroom habits," RFT's Daniel Hill wrote in 2019. Vipers fans were rumored to "poop standing up" and "eat wings with a spoon," according to Facebook fan page messages. "In keeping, the hatred that Battlehawks fans hold for the detestable Vipers burns with the intensity of a thousand suns," Hill concluded.
The Vipers fans, then in Tampa Bay, may not have ever even been aware of the rivalry. If they were, it's unlikely they bothered to tell anyone in Las Vegas about it when the team moved there.
Many Vipers fans in Las Vegas were reportedly confused by the vitriol being hurled their way by St. Louis on message boards. Despite the move, the Las Vegas Vipers exhibit the same vices as their Tampa Bay counterparts: Vipers fans still shit standing up and their players wear ballet slippers, size 7 1/2.
March 25 will be a day people finally find out which is the better team — but for this rivalry, what happens on the field seems less important than what happens on the message boards.
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