During the peak of his heyday, just about every NASCAR fan had a different origin story of when they began hating Kyle Busch.
Maybe it was in 2008, when he spun Dale Earnhardt Jr. during a battle for the win at Richmond Raceway. Maybe it was in 2011, when he crashed Ron Hornaday Jr. under caution during a Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.
Maybe it was during his buildup of years of moonlighting in lower series races while running his full Cup Series schedule, taking dozens of victories away from developing drivers who needed them more.
Whatever the case, he embraced the villain role like few others have ever done before him. He never minced words in front of the cameras, and every time he won, he would give a sarcastic bow to the crowd.
And he won a lot.
All Kyle Busch did was win, whether you liked him or not
Across all three national series, Busch's 232 career NASCAR wins is the all-time record. And for those who don't take that accomplishment seriously given that "only" 63 of them were in Cup, it should be pointed out that many of those lower series wins came against a multitude of fellow Cup drivers.
Being realistic, some of those fields were probably just as strong as the ones that pre-modern era legends such as Richard Petty and David Pearson competed against at the top level.
Still, this is purely a Cup Series list, and that's why Busch lands at No. 7. It was clear from the get-go that he was going to be one of the special ones. In fact, he debuted in the Truck Series so young that NASCAR had to institute an age limit of 18 due to the tobacco sponsorships in the series. It didn't hold him down for long, and he had a Cup ride with Hendrick Motorsports before his 20th birthday.
Busch became, at the time, the youngest winner in Cup Series history at Auto Club Speedway in late 2005. He'd emerge into a star over the course of the next two years, but his true breakout came when he moved to Joe Gibbs Racing in 2008, winning eight races and leading the point standings for most of the year.
In the late 2000s and early 2010s, the only thing that held Busch back was a struggle to perform during the Chase, as a title still eluded him and he'd never even come particularly close. That all changed in 2015, when he put together one of the most resilient seasons in modern memory by winning five times, including the most important one, after a broken leg sidelined him for the first 11 events.
That season kickstarted the best five-year stretch of Busch's career, when he won two championships and 27 races between 2015 and 2019. Perhaps the most definitive one of them all came at Chicagoland Speedway in 2018, when he booted Kyle Larson out of the way in the final turns to capture the checkered flag.
After entertaining the jeering crowd with his signature bow and a mock crying gesture, Busch then dropped the coldest one-liner of his career: "If you don't like that kind of racing, don't even watch."
We watched. We all watched. And in time, we'll be glad we did.