SABRETOOTH

During the Mutant Massacre of 1986, the Marauders swept through the Morlock tunnels beneath New York on orders to wipe the underground mutants out entirely. Wolverine stalked those tunnels alone, picking through the bodies for anyone left breathing, and found Sabretooth instead — Creed had the Morlocks' Healer in his grip and was in no hurry to let the one man who could save the wounded walk away. Sabretooth happily owned the job out loud, boasting that he was a Marauder and that Mr. Sinister had sent the team down there to do it.

Logan had no interest in the fair fight Creed wanted. With the Healer's life worth more than his pride, Wolverine brought a weakened stretch of tunnel ceiling down between them, scooped the old Morlock up, and ran the rescue instead of finishing the duel. Creed was left digging himself out of the rubble, shouting after a man who had chosen a stranger's life over settling their score — and the tunnels were scoured clean by fire moments later, when Thor gave the murdered Morlocks a funeral pyre of lightning in Thor Vol. 1 #374 (1986).

That sewer ambush carries more history than its page count suggests. Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #212 (1986) is the first time Wolverine and Sabretooth ever fought inside an X-Men comic, the seed from which their entire decades-long rivalry grew in print, and it is also the issue where Sinister's name first entered the story, spoken as the unseen employer behind the slaughter. Creed came back the very next issue, limping into the X-Mansion itself to pick the fight up again with Psylocke.