Celebrity Wrestling - When Stars Enter The Squared Circle, Part I
A three-part study of the weird things that happen when wrestling meets the mainstream.
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 the hire-ups at Titan Towers refer to as ‘sports entertainment’.
Such flagrant flirting with the Trade Descriptions Act serves two purposes. On the one hand, it frees the company from having to abide by the rulings of local athletics 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’s owners to reposition the product in another highly competitive marketplace.
Petrified that pro wrestling would always be associated with the fairgrounds and freak shows of yesteryear, Vince McMahon was 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, McMahon did everything he could to make rasslin’ seem legit.
This quest for legitimacy led the company to embrace other kinds of entertainers, too. Singers, sports personalities, actors - it didn’t matter what field you’re in, providing people know your face, Vince was 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’d roll out the red carpet and give you the five-star treatment. You see, in his eyes, if bona fide celebrities consider wrestling to be a legitimate wing of the show business family, then that’s what it must be.
And by an ever weirder form of osmosis, if showbiz figures want to actually take part in WWE programming then the company’s performers must also be stars. It sounds strange, doesn’t it? But remember how odd a bloke Vince McMahon can be and you’ll see that, in his wacky world, this sort of thinking makes perfect sense.
The wrestling industry’s infatuation with mainstream celebrity dates back years. In the 1970s, 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 the first WrestleMania that the star-crossed relationship assumed frankly laughable proportions.
WrestleMania I really was brain-meltingly bizarre. Besides a main even featuring 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 Richiter 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-stated what would prove a long-running problem for the company - namely the suggestion that i) any old celeb could wrestle, and ii) said celebrity could hold their own against the company’s full-time professionals.
But as for Martin, Liberace and the former Cassius Clay, their presence added nothing but a bizarre, David Lynch-esque edge to proceddings. 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 rap queens Salt & Peppa, comedy actor Martin Short, professional hottie Carmen Electra and busty horror hostess Elvira. Yep, it’s a pretty odd bunch, but it excludes Gennifer Flowers. She appeared at WrestleMania XIV but isn’t really a celebrity, thus serving to illustrate the McMahon familys’ inability to distinguish fame from infamy.