14 Worst Cases of Celebrity Involvement at WrestleMania

Morton Downey Jr piper

WWE is known for dragging out various celebrities every year for WrestleMania. From Snoop Dogg last year and Arnold Schwarzenegger the year before to Mr. T main eventing the first ever WrestleMania, celebrities have been as much a part of WrestleMania as the wrestlers themselves. Some of these moments become part of WWE history, some celebrities, such as Mr. T and William Perry, are inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame just for their appearance at Mania.

However, some of these celebrity moments go down as some of the worst in wrestling history. What I have done here is compile what I consider to be the very worst of celebrity involvement in WrestleMania, just so you don’t have to, aren’t I nice?

 

14. Mickey Rourke – WrestleMania XXV

Having Mickey Rourke at WrestleMania in 2009 made sense because he’d recently starred in The Wrestler which was about wrestling, see. On top of that, people suddenly remembered who Mickey Rourke was, he’d just made his big comeback in a big Hollywood film, which got him nominated for an Oscar, so he was a big deal. However, his Mania appearance turned out to be, quite frankly, a dud.

According to Chris Jericho, he was supposed to wrestle a match with Rourke, who blabbed about it on the Screen Actor’s Guild Red Carpet, but the powers that be (I don’t know who exactly but since this is Hollywood it’s probably Satan or something) hated the idea, thinking it would damage his chances of winning an Oscar, so that idea was scrapped. In the end, Jericho worked a surprisingly decent match with Roddy Piper, Jimmy Snuka and Ricky Steamboat (it was originally supposed to be Greg Valentine, thank God it wasn’t).

Rourke was still going to be involved, but what we got instead of him wrestling was him sitting in the crowd looking pissed off. We see him before the match and he can’t even fake a smile, maybe it’s because he’s sitting in the crowd with everyone else instead of his own private box, maybe it’s because he didn’t get to wrestle at WrestleMania, or maybe it’s because he lost out on his Academy Award, who knows? When he’s not looking pissed he’s looking bored. I thought this guy was an actor, he can’t even pretend to enjoy himself. Someone must have told him at some point because he starts smiling.

Then the match happens and you forget that Mickey Rourke was there, just like the rest of the world did around 2011. Jericho calls Rourke into the ring who milks it for more than it’s worth, making his way to the ring as slowly as possible. Rourke and Jericho spar for a bit before Rourke knocks Jericho out with one punch; way to get Rourke over. It’s a shame we’ll never see him again. Totally unmemorable celebrity moment, and the worst thing about his Mania appearance was his hair.

 

13. Gennifer Flowers – WrestleMania XIV

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x39rvl8

Gennifer Flowers is famous for one thing and one thing only: fucking Bill Clinton. During Clinton’s 1992 election campaign, Flowers came out saying she had had a twelve year relationship with him. Earlier in 1998 (the year of Mania 14), Bill Clinton admitted that he had indeed had sex with Flowers (Gennifer Flowers, not the plants) back in 1977, two years after his marriage to Hillary.

If you were lucky enough to see the Free For All (the 90’s version of today’s pre-shows). you were treated to a video of Flowers hyping her appearance at WrestleMania. She says Shawn Michaels can be her boytoy anytime, if she ever got together with Steve Austin it would be anything but Stone Cold and that she could make The Undertaker rise from the dead.

She seemed to be less seductive during the actual event however when she awkwardly interviewed then Intercontinental Champion The Rock. She asks Rocky if he were the ruler of the United States how would he handle the homeless situation. The Rock feels like this: as long as he still has his palace in Florida, he doesn’t care where they keep their cardboard houses, as long as it’s not on his lawn. Gennifer, who is luckily kept off-camera for most of this, looks around as if she’s bored. I’m sure she’d be happier talking about herself instead of The Rock. She brings up the judicial system and The Rock says that if he were the Judge, Jury and Executioner, he’d be a hung jury. Gennifer laughs and when she eventually gets the joke, laughs again.

She asks about how he’d run the White House and The Rock makes a blowjob joke, and Gennifer actually looks uncomfortable about the joke. You’d think that someone who made her name by fucking the president would be more inclined to talk and even joke about oral sex, after all that’s how she made her name. When she ends the interview, which only goes on for about two minutes, she looks so relieved that it looks like she didn’t enjoy all the money that was thrown at her to do this segment, which was apparently a lot as she supposedly made $500,000 just from publicizing the affair.

 

12. Steve Allen – WrestleMania VI

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9knfd_wwf-wrestlemania-vi-report_sport

For those not familiar with Steve Allen, he was a TV host most famous for The Tonight Show. He was also a musician and comedian, although judging by his appearance at WrestleMania VI, that could be up for debate. Steve Allen had actually been working on television for over 40 years before his Mania appearance, and by this time his stint on The Tonight Show and his own talk show The Steve Allen Show had long been a thing of the past (the latter ended in the mid 1960’s), and around the late 80’s early 90’s, he was appearing as a guest more often than a host.

Steve Allen’s baffling Mania appearance, however, isn’t nearly as memorable as his past TV success. Steve Allen shows up to play the Russian national anthem on a piano in a shower. No, I didn’t make that up. This poor excuse for a comedy segment lasts just over a minute and sees Steve Allen attempt to play the Russian national anthem for Nikolai Volkoff and Boris Zhukov, but after what feel like hours of Stalin (geddit?) someone flushes the toilet before he can perform the anthem itself.

He pops up again later to interview Rhythm & Blues. Things start off okay, Steve Allen goes to introduce “one of the hottest new bands in the business today, but unfortunately they’re not here.” Heh. He tells Honky Tonk Man that he hasn’t been this excited since he found out Pee Wee Herman was straight, because gay jokes were all the rage back then. He goes on to insult the team because Vince prefers to get old celebrities over rather than his tag teams.

And so concludes this tale of Steve Allen at WrestleMania VI. Don’t expect to be seeing him in the Hall of Fame anytime soon, not until they’ve run out of celebrities to stick in it at least.

 

11. William Perry – WrestleMania 2

William Perry
Source: WWE.com

Chicago Bears defensive lineman William ‘The Refrigerator’ Perry was a huge star back in the day, and his appearance at WrestleMania 2 was always going to lead him to the WWE Hall of Fame, but should it have done? Perry competed in a 20 man NFL vs WWF battle royal, and he without a doubt got the biggest pop of the match, bigger than Bruno Sammartino and Andre the Giant.

Perry, or The Fridge, looks like he got his wrestling gear from a charity shop, wearing a tank top which doesn’t fit and looks strangely like a Baywatch bathing suit, and boots that don’t match. After selling in the corner a bit he gets a massive wedgie which not only looks ridiculous but it’s also very distracting, not to mention hilarious. For most of the match Tony Atlas holds him and they look like two drunk men trying to slow dance before Perry finally eliminates him.

Big John Studd starts battering Perry in the corner and once the ring has emptied enough Perry feels confident to try some offense. But since he’s a defensive lineman, his offense is understandably terrible. He runs at The Hart Foundation, and then runs at Big John Studd. He runs at him again but Studd hits an Elbow and takes The Fridge to the dump. So Perry’s WrestleMania appearance included one of the worst outfits in wrestling history, and some of the worst offense to go with it. It’s a good thing he’s so famous because otherwise he wouldn’t have stood a chance getting into the Hall of Fame, while other NFL stars who looked and faired better than him in the same match didn’t.

 

10. Clara Peller – WrestleMania 2

Clara Peller is a name that a lot of people won’t recognise these days, but back in the mid-1980’s she was on TV pretty much every single day. So who was she? She’s the “where’s the beef?” woman, that’s who. She started her advertising career in her 80s appearing in adverts for the Massachusetts State Lottery and most famously for Wendy’s restaurant, asking “where’s the beef?” Walter Mondale famously used the line against senator Gary Hart. I mean, I don’t do it justice, but “where’s the beef?” was huge in the 80’s, it was probably the first meme before memes were even a thing.

Her fame got her many jobs including this one, she was to be the guest time keeper for the NFL vs WWF battle royal. Peller had two jobs to do, one was to say something on the mic, but we’ll never know what because rather than hold the mic up to her mouth when she speaks, she waves it around like a baton and seems to yell something at the audience, probably telling them to get off her lawn or something. Her second job, as special guest timekeeper, is to ring the bell, something she neglects to do for whatever reason, and as a result everyone just starts brawling to start the match. Two jobs and she failed both of them. To be fair to her, she was in her mid-80s and very ill, she would actually die just a year later.

 

9. Nicholas Turturro – WrestleMania XI

Turturro
Source: Ramblemania

Famous for playing Detective James Martinez in NYPD Blue, Nicholas Turturro was brought to WrestleMania XI to use his detective skills to solve a very easily solved mystery: where in the world is Pamela Anderson? Anderson was set to escort Shawn Michaels to the ring during his match with Diesel, but was nowhere to be found (Anderson would have also made this list, but all she did at WrestleMania was walk a bit and sit down, and even she can’t get that wrong).

The first segment with Nicholas Turturro ends early due to technical difficulties, which made it the best Turturro segment in the show, but sadly they repeat it later with no problems. Turturro repeatedly pops up during the show to tell us that he doesn’t know where Pamela is, which is helpful? On top of that, he doesn’t know when to shut the hell up. He constantly says stuff like “Vince, if there’s anything I can do, just let me know.” Well you can fuck off for a start. He keeps going on and on, long after the segment has ended and we’re supposed to be cutting away to a match.

He interviews Bob Backlund and Jonathan Taylor Thomas but neglects to hold the mic up to either one of them so we miss most of what they’re saying. Turturro ends this segment by continuing to talk as Owen Hart makes his entrance. Finally, in his fourth fucking segment, Turturro pops up to say that he can’t find Pamela and ergo she must have left the building. Minutes later, Pamela Anderson would appear alongside Diesel as he made his entrance. Nicholas Turturro is fucking useless.

 

8. Pee-wee Herman – WrestleMania XXVII

The Rock Pee-wee Herman
Source: WWE.com

Hey remember when Pee-wee Herman was popular back in the 80’s? Yeah, he sounds like the kinda guy who would fit right in at WrestleMania 27. Sure, a lot of people watching Mania in 2011 were probably kids back in the 1980’s, but a lot of them were probably kids back in the 1970’s too, but that’s no excuse to roll out Jack Klugman.

Pee-wee is not only introduced as John Cena’s number one fan (fuck you kids) but also everything John Cena stands for. Yes, John Cena stands for man-children and public masturbators. Pee-wee stands there shouting “YOU CAN’T SEE ME!” and The Rock read my mind and said, “Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound and look.” Things just get worse when Mean Gene Okerlund comes in for some of what Vince McMahon thinks comedy is.

I simply refuse to remember anything after that, it was that bad, and WWE seems to agree with me because in 2016, just five years after Pee-wee’s Mania appearance, he was included in a list of the top ten forgotten WrestleMania celebrities. Pee-wee Herman might be popular with children but you wouldn’t hire Justin Fletcher to do a segment with Kevin Owens at WrestleMania, would you?

 

7. Rona Barrett – WrestleMania VI

Rona Barrett
Source: crazymax.org

Rona Barrett is, according to the ever reliable Wikipedia, an American gossip columnist and businesswoman. She founded the Rona Barrett Lavender Company, which, from what I can tell, sold the kinda stuff you’d find in places like Lush, and the Rona Barrett Foundation, a non-profit organisation that helps senior citizens, but this is still in development. She was also involved with the short lived TV shows Television: Inside and Out and America.

Rona popped up to interview Ms. Elizabeth prior to her return to managing, which was fine, nothing of note there, but what gets her on this list is what happens later on in the night. While being interviewed by commentators Gorilla Monsoon and Jesse Ventura, Gorilla asks if she has any gossip on anyone in the WWF, and as it turns out she does. After saying that wrestlers have very clean backgrounds (ha!), she says that she has come up with something, and that something happens to be a sex tape starring Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura. She claims to have the footage with her but before they can show it they cut to an interview with Sean Mooney.

Later on, we cut back to Gorilla and Jesse who briefly mention the alleged sex tape, saying there’s nothing to speak of while Jesse looks pissed. So what the hell happened there? Was Rona Barrett just told to make something up and wing it and as a result she brought up a non-existent porno starring married man Jesse Ventura back in a day when WWE was considered PG? Probably yes.

 

6. Snooki – WrestleMania XXVII

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqF7bo_Qz00

I’m going to say something controversial here, but I didn’t think Snooki’s WrestleMania appearance was all that bad. Compared to some other celebrity appearances that we’ve seen at WrestleMania, a four minute cool down match featuring some talentless bint isn’t the worst thing to happen at a WrestleMania, but her appearance has received such a negative reaction from fans that it was never not going to be on this list.

The match opens with Vicki Guerrero coming out and screaming “Excuse me!” which gets the wrong kind of heat. Hell Dr. Isaac Yankem’s entrance theme wasn’t as annoying as her, so already we’re off to a bad start. Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler are silent until they remember they’re supposed to be commentating and JR says, “Uh, what a night.”
Snooki is teaming with John Morrison and Trish Stratus to take on Dolph Ziggler and Laycool. Fans don’t react to Snooki’s entrance, which is good. Snooki has a big smile on her face as Michelle McCool tackles her to the ground, I guess Marty Jannetty must have trained her. Snooki looks as unnatural in the ring as a–I don’t know, I can’t think of anything more unnatural looking. How about a cat giving birth to an elephant? No, not that’s still not unnatural enough. Trish puts her hand up for Snooki to lick it for some reason, but Snooki assumes she wants to tag out, so she tags but the referee ignores it and Trish just goes back to chopping McCool. This is a hard match to describe.

Snooki tags in and everyone boos, which is also good. She hits a Handspring Elbow which looks better than most Handspring Elbows because Snooki doesn’t do that weird shuffle backwards thing Chyna and Kelly Kelly used to do, so yeah, I just praised Snooki. She then does a cartwheel, lands on her feet, and flops onto Michelle McCool, which just looked awful. And that’s it, she gets the three count and wins the match. Now I think it’s best I explain why I don’t consider this to be a terrible WrestleMania moment including a celebrity. First of all, it was just a cool-down match so people have time to get over the thirty minute Undertaker vs Triple H match of the night. It was just there for WWE to say, “Hey look, Snooki is at WrestleMania, hey Jersey Shore fans why don’t you buy the show?” The worst thing about Snooki at Mania, however, is the knowledge that one day she will be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

 

5. Some Footballers – WrestleMania XI

Wrestlemania 11 footballers
Source: WWE.com

I had to lump these, well, lumps in together, because they all share a segment and they’re all equally bad at it. Why are all these guys at WrestleMania 11? Because, as you may or may not recall, Lawrence Taylor was main eventing the show in a match against Bam Bam Bigelow, and to combat the Million Dollar Corporation, LT brought his football buddies with him.

The segment which lands them a spot on this list comes when Nicholas Turturro asks Steve McMichael if he knows where Pamela Anderson is (that’s the story of the show, where is Pamela Anderson, isn’t it nice how WWE puts celebrities over their own wrestlers?). He doesn’t know but he complains about Kama and fluffs his lines as he does, which I guess is what got him his commentary job in WCW.

Everyone else is just as bad. One guy calls out King Kong Bundy and says “I’m right here baby, standing right here, we’re right here.” We get it, you’re right there, you don’t have to bang on about it! The next guy calls out Nikolai Volkoff and says “We’re right here.” (I think I see a pattern emerging), and then the final guy calls Tatanka a cigar store Indian and says “We’re not hard to find, we’re all right here.” Never have I heard so many people say so little.

 

4. Kitana Baker & Tanya Ballinger – WrestleMania XIX

Who the hell is Kitana Baker and Tanya Ballinger you ask? Well, don’t worry, I’m sure everyone was asking themselves this when they appeared at WrestleMania 19. They’re both models, Baker most famous for the HLA (hot lesbian action) segment involving Stephanie McMahon, she was also in Backyard Wrestling: Don’t Try This at Home. But they’re probably best for being the Miller Lite catfight girls. They arrive at the beginning of the show and spend most of it arguing over what match they’re looking forward to most (a reference to the Miller Lite adverts I think, I honestly don’t care) and being all girly with Torrie Wilson and Stacy Keibler, which involves a lot of squeaking and sentences that begin with “oh my gawd” and ending with “and like, stuff.” Y’know, typical Valley Girl talk.

They end up having a match and Coach introduces the WrestleMania catfight and the Miller Lite Catfight girls (not to be confused with the Muller Light Catfight girls) Tanya and Kitana, who get no reaction from the crowd. Before they can “get it on”, Stacy Keibler comes out and makes it a threesome, but then Torrie Wilson comes out and makes it a foursome. Torrie and Stacy do everything except fuck while Tanya and Kitana gently brush each other with pillows.

The segment ends when the Catfight girls pull down Coach’s pants and Stacy pins her. This sorry excuse for a segment only happened because we needed a break between Chris Jericho vs Shawn Michaels and Triple H vs Booker T.

 

3. Robin Leach – WrestleMania IV

Robin Leach wwe

I still consider WrestleMania 4 to be the worst WrestleMania ever. Sure everyone likes to point to WrestleMania 32 as the worst but that’s just the worst in recent memory, and at least it had good matches. Well two of them, but that’s still two more than WrestleMania 4 which is so long and boring it becomes a chore to even get through. The story going into Mania 4 was the vacant WWF Championship, which was to be on the line in a fourteen man tournament.

Robin Leach was famous for his show Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous as well as his catchphrase “champagne wishes and caviar dreams”, which he used at Mania 4 too. Leach is brought in to read the rules of the tournament, which he proceeds not to do, instead he rambles on about there being a tournament and closes his promo by saying “I’m Robin Leach and I do know why.” What? What the fuck does that mean? He knows why he’s Robin Leach? Anyway, he does such a good job at announcing the rules that the commentators explain them themselves.

Robin Leach pops up again, this time at the end of WrestleMania just before the main event to present the WWF Championship. Leach drunkenly stumbles down the entrance way and looks terrified as children and fans grope at the belt, staining it with their grubby little fingerprints. I don’t know how much Leach was paid to get drunk in Trump Plaza, but it was almost certainly far too much.

 

2. Morton Downey Jr. – WrestleMania V

Morton Downey Jr
Source: WWE.com

Back in 1989, WrestleMania V won Wrestling Observer Newsletter’s Worst Major Wrestling Show award, and looking back it’s easy to see why, and one of the worst parts of the show was the Piper’s Pit segment with scumbag trash TV talk show host Morton Downey Jr. who was known for violently and randomly attacking people, insulting unsuspecting people, and generally being a cunt.

Brother Love comes out instead of Roddy Piper complete with kilt and Love actually does a good Piper impression. Morton comes out and Love tells him that he loves him, but he doesn’t like him. Morton says that he doesn’t want a man who wears a skirt to love him, because Morton hated gays as well, you see. Anyway, Piper comes out, chases Brother Love off, and then the fun (or lack thereof) begins.

Cunt Morton stands up off his stool and blows smoke into Roddy Piper’s face, which clearly pisses Piper off, and even after he seemingly breaks character and tells him to stop, Morton keeps on doing it. Eventually, Piper grabs a fire extinguisher and blasts Morton in the face. According to Piper himself there were two extinguishers, one was half empty which was the one they had intended to use in the segment, but Piper, not being a big fan of Morton’s (to say the least) replaced it with a full one and sprayed Morton so much he couldn’t breathe. In a panic Morton grabbed Piper’s ankle, at which point Piper was prepared to bash Morton in the head, which would have made this segment watchable, but unfortunately he thought better of it and left him alone. Piper walks away trying not to look pissed off, but fails miserably.

 

1. Susan St. James – WrestleMania 2

It seems there were a lot of terrible celebrity appearances at WrestleMania 2 (so many that I actually got rid of a couple when editing this article), but the worst has to be Susan St. James. Susan was an actress best known for TV shows such as McMillan and Wife, The Name of the Game and Kate & Allie, but to wrestling fans she will always be known for two words: “uh-oh!”

Susan was commentating the first portion of Mania 2 (which took place in three different arenas), and during her tenure as a commentator, she said “uh-oh” around 50 times (I actually lost count so that number probably isn’t accurate, but that’s how many I did count), eventually she says it so much her broadcast colleague Vince McMahon starts repeating her. She also famously said “Alright George eat his leg!” when George Steele bit Randy Savage’s leg. When she’s not saying “uh-oh”, she’s either mumbling or saying nothing, which is when she’s at her best. The only problem then is we just have Vince to listen to on commentary, uh-oh.

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