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Richard Luck |
SummerSlam's Jackass angle may have gone up in smoke, but wrestling has flirted with plenty of other celebs…
The company name might lead you to assume otherwise, but World Wrestling Entertainment doesn’t actually employ wrestlers. No, it hires “superstars”. And rather than wrestling, the company’s employees participate in something that the Titan Towers bigwigs commonly refer to as “sports entertainment”.
Such flagrant flirting with the Trade Descriptions Act serves two purposes. On the one hand, it frees Vince McMahon from having to abide by the rulings of local Athletic Commissions who would probably take a dim view of guys battering one another with steel chairs or using barbed wire like dental floss. On the other, it allows the WWE owner to reposition his product in another highly competitive marketplace.
Petrified that pro wrestling will forever be associated with the fairground booths and freak shows of yesteryear, Vinnie Mac is desperate for his business to be seen as a rival to mainstream forms of entertainment. So in addition to employing state-of-the-art visuals and enough pyrotechnics to dwarf your local council-approved Bonfire Night celebrations, Vince has done everything he can to make rasslin’ seem like it’s legit.
This quest for legitimacy has led McMahon to embrace other kinds of entertainers, too. Singers, sportsmen, actors – it doesn’t matter what field you’re in; provided that people know your face, Vince is more than happy to press the flesh. And if you’re prepared to show up at ringside or take part in a skit, why, he'll roll out the red carpet and give you the five-star treatment. You see, in Vince’s eyes, if bona fide celebrities see wrestling as a legitimate wing of the showbusiness family, then that’s what it must be.
And by an even weirder form of osmosis, if showbiz figures want to actually take part in WWE programming, then McMahon’s employees (and, by extension, the man himself) must also be stars. It sounds strange, doesn’t it? But remember how odd a bloke Vince McMahon can often be (lest we forget, this is the guy who once thought that rape and necrophilia equalled ratings) and you’ll see that, in his wacky world, this sort of thinking makes perfect sense.
With the SummerSlam Jackass match (which was set to see Johnny Knoxville, Chris Pontius and Steve-O actually defeat Umaga, one of the company’s hottest stars) officially cancelled and TNA recklessly hiring Pac-Man Jones, we thought it would be fun to look at some of wrestling’s past celebrity hits and misses…
WRESTLEMANIA: NIGHT OF A THOUSAND STARS
The wrestling industry’s infatuation with mainstream celebrity dates back many years. In the Seventies, Frank Sinatra took Giant Haystacks aside at the Royal Albert Hall to tell him that: “Britain’s wrestlers are the finest entertainers in Europe.” But it wasn’t until WrestleMania that the star-crossed relationship assumed frankly laughable proportions.
For those who don’t own the DVD and/or are too young to remember, WrestleMania I was a brain-meltingly strange spectacle. Besides a main event that featured The A-Team’s Mr T and Muhammad Ali (the latter as “guest outside referee”), Vince McMahon’s make-or-break show also featured baseball legend Billy Martin on announcing duties, pop star Cyndi Lauper managing Wendi Richter and all-round celebrity oddball Liberace performing a kick-line with Radio City Music Hall’s legendary dance troupe, The Rockettes.
To be fair, the association with Lauper (who could then argue to be every bit as popular as Madonna) did McMahon a lot of good, with the publicity being extenuated by a string of profile-raising specials on MTV. And since The A-Team was the biggest show on TV at the time, there’s something to be said for hooking up with the former Laurence Tureaud, even if this kick-started what would prove a long running problem for the company – namely the suggestion that 1) any old celebrity could wrestle, and 2) said celebrity could hold their own against the company’s full-time professionals. But as for Martin, Liberace and the rapidly fading Cassius Clay, their presence added nothing but a bizarre David Lynch-esque edge to proceedings. Why were they there? Because they were famous, dammit!
And so began the trend that’s still prevalent today. “The Showcase Of The Immortals” has since been visited by rock gods Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne, soul legend Gladys Knight, rap kings Run DMC, NYPD Blue star Nicholas Turturro, comedy actor Martin Short, professional hottie Carmen Electra and busty horror hostess Elvira. Yep, it’s a pretty odd bunch, but it excludes Bill Clinton’s alleged former lover Gennifer Flowers. She appeared at WrestleMania XIV but isn’t really a celebrity, thus serving to illustrate Vince’s inability to distinguish between fame and infamy.
SUNDAY NIGHT HEAT MAGAZINE
Of course, Mania isn’t the only night that the stars come out in the WWE universe. Buy any old pay-per-view these days and there’s a chance you’ll encounter someone who has even less place in a wrestling ring than The Great Khali. Some of the stranger spectacles include comedian Drew Carey participating in the 2001 Royal Rumble, martial arts legend and B-movie king Chuck Norris policing the Undertaker versus Yokozuna Casket Match at the 1994 Survivor Series, and even Hulk Hogan’s nemesis in the film No Holds Barred, Zeus (played by “Tiny” Tom Lister), coming to life to help the Big Boss Man and Randy Savage beat up the Hulkster in a true Last Action Hero moment.
As for regular WWE programming, well, you never know when your evening’s going to be ruined by a band you hate performing a song you loathe, or a celebrity you can’t stand taking part in a skit so lame and long that it makes eternity seem pretty short. There’s been such an abundance of stars over the years that it almost seems wrong to single anyone out. However, getting the cast of Highlander: Endgame – including a spectacularly haggard Christopher Lambert – to pal around with co-star Edge for an evening was pretty tragic, albeit not quite as bad as the time that Deuce Bigelow star Rob Schneider stopped by to judge one of those insufferable Diva Search segments.
And as for the night that Arnold Schwarzenegger collected a WWE title and laid Triple H out with one punch? Just another example of WWE shooting itself in the foot by suggesting that an outsider – in this case, an action movie star – was harder than one of its franchise players. Oh yes, and it didn’t help matters that Arnie was on board to promote End Of Days – a film so bad that it makes previous career low Jingle All The Way look like Life Of Brian.
WCW – WOEFUL CELEBRITY WASTAGE
Of course, Vince isn’t the only one with an A-list obsession. Anyone who recalls the later days of World Championship Wrestling will remember Eric Bischoff’s efforts to attract big names that did great damage to the integrity of his shows and the financial standing of his company. Not that he was the first WCW exec to see stars as a way to improve the product; everyone should log on to YouTube and check out the time that RoboCop came to the ring to aid an outnumbered Sting in 1990 – and we’re not talking about Peter Weller, the actor who played RoboCop; no, it was old steel tits himself who lumbered up the aisle to save the day.
When Mad Uncle Eric was behind the wheel, trainwrecks like the RoboCop debacle seemed to occur on an almost weekly basis. The most memorable misfires included paying Kiss $500,000 to play a single song and plug a Gene Simmons-themed wrestler (The Demon, a gimmick that Brian Adams passed on to rookie Dale Torborg after just one night), hiring Megadeth to play Goldberg’s theme music at a time when the band meant nothing to no-one, and having Rick Steiner feud with none other than Chucky – the killer doll from the Child’s Play movies.
Easy E also developed a thing for basketball players, shelling out almost $1 million to have Chicago Bulls bad boy Dennis Rodman side with the nWo at a handful of dates, many of which he no-showed. Ever one to throw good money after bad, he then brought in Karl Malone (of the Bulls’ 1998 playoff rivals, the Utah Jazz) to feud with “Rodzilla”. And then there’s the strange case of Jay Leno. Long keen to establish himself as a Hollywood player, Bischoff struck up a relationship with the Tonight Show host that ended up with the WCW VP teaming with Hulk Hogan to take on the pudgy, banana-chinned Leno and Diamond Dallas Page.
This being ATM Eric, the match was preceded by a stupid and shockingly expensive preamble that saw part of Nitro given over to Bischoff’s own Tonight-style chat show, where he interviewed such luminaries as Scott Steiner. As for how Leno acquitted himself in the ring, it says a lot for the comedian and trainers Billy Kidman and Chris Kanyon that he wasn’t a total disgrace. Still, come the three count, WCW had booked a scenario where a non-athletic non-wrestler was able to stand up to the biggest and best in the business, making a mockery of the whole damn thing.
But Eric still had plenty of other celebrity boobs in the wings. There’s an entire article to be written about putting the World Title on David Arquette (a cock-up courtesy of WCW’s other clown prince, Vince Russo, albeit to promote the feeble, Bischoff-approved Ready To Rumble). And the decision to hire hip-hop impresario Master P deserves special mention, because it proved just how poorly the WCW execs understood their project. To have P and his posse spin discs in southern arenas was like feeding so many Christians to the largest pride of lions. And by throwing The Filthy Animals and The West Texas Rednecks into the mix, Bischoff somehow created a situation where Bobby Duncum Jr was more popular than Rey Mysterio.
C&W: COUNTRY AND WRESTLING
Speaking of the Stetson-wearing south, TNA has also trodden the celebrity path. The federation’s very first PPV saw Jeff Jarrett eliminated from a gauntlet match to crown the first TNA champion by right-wing country music star Toby Keith. Since then, Chris Rock dropped into The Asylum to shoot a sequence for his limp political comedy Head Of State, NASCAR pundit Jeff Hammond palled around with 3 Live Kru and Chicago White Sox catcher AJ Pierzynski twice teamed up with the team’s conditioning coach, Dale Torborg (yep, him again), to feud with The Diamonds In The Rough and the unlikely combination of Lance Hoyt and another baseball star, David Eckstein.
These hook-ups have been quite successful, what with it being fair to assume that your average TNA fan is also a blue-collar fan of good ol' sports and country music. However, by having its stars mingle with celebrities from these particular fields, it’s conceivable that some might see TNA as nothing but entertainment for hicks and hayseeds. Courting relationships with the likes of Toby Keith – a man who makes George Dubya look like a moderate – certainly doesn’t do a lot to attract the East Coast crowd. And having the stout country singer manhandle one of the company’s biggest names on opening day is the sort of thing that really doesn’t do anyone any good.
All of that said, there’s more sense in cozying up to relevant stars than simply getting excited about anyone who’s ever been in the public eye. Take ECW; the to-the-edge nature of the show meant there was some cache in climbing into bed (literally as well as figuratively, in The Blue Meanie’s case) with the likes of porn star Jasmine St Clair. It was certainly a lot cooler than Vince McMahon wetting himself (figuratively rather than literally, on this occasion) over persuading Mary Tyler Moore to be ringside for WrestleMania VI…
For the rest of this feature, check out issue 18 of FSM – available at WH Smith and all good retailers. (For US readers we are now carried at Borders, so check for local availability or click here to subscribe.)
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