TNA Brings in J-Woww: Top 10 Worst Celebrity-Wrestling Crossovers

When you think of the great female professional wrestlers, you know the names that come to mind: Mae Young, The Fabulous Moolah, Luna Vachon, Wendi Richter and J-Woww.

Wait, J-Woww?

Yes, it happened, and yes, Vince Russo was prominently involved. You know Vince Russo, I'm sure, the same man responsible for David Arquette, Adam "Pac-Man" Jones and other pseudo-celebrities coming into the wrestling ring.

While Vince McMahon has done the celebrity crossover thing for years, he tended to be more subdued about it.

While WrestleMania I had Mr. T in the main event with special guest timekeeper Liberace, special guest ring announcer Billy Martin and special guest referee Muhammad Ali, these could be easily justified.

(Mr. T looks like he could at least kick someone's ass, Ali at least had some "sports entertainment" experience thanks to his bout with Antonio Inoki, Liberace just needed to ring a bell and Billy Martin just needed to announce the wrestlers as they came in. Plus if you know about his life and baseball career as a player and manager, he's been known to fight at times, too.)

Plus, as much as the guest host concept is a hated one in the IWC (and everywhere else), at least the hosts weren't competing for world titles.

But Russo? Well we know his history, and yes, McMahon does have some turkeys on his list, but it's pretty much dedicated to Russo. I give you J-Woww and the 10 worst celebrity-wrestling crossovers.

10. Karl Malone

I didn't put Dennis Rodman on this list because had he gone into pro wrestling instead of basketball, we could be talking about Rodman as one of the greatest heels of all time, an evolutionary 1990's Gorgeous George type that had athleticism and knew how to get under the skin of both the fans and the opponents.

Karl Malone on the other hand was made to play basketball. He had the wrestling "look" but other than his infamous "I'm hunting little Mexican Girls" comment he made to Kobe Bryant's wife, when did you ever think that this was someone capable of drawing money had he been a wrestler? I'd see him as a mid-carder at best.

Funny thing is, you couldn't write up a better feud between him and Rodman. Prior to their encounter in the ring in the summer of 1998, the two were fierce rivals on the court, with their teams competing in the last two NBA Finals. Rodman had the edge 2-0, though it did help that some guard from North Carolina was on his team.

Yet Rodman's main assignment in those series was The Mailman, and The Worm was in Malone's head the whole time. It probably had a lot to do with Malone at the end of the '98 series, which set up Jordan's shot.

But this isn't an NBA history article, this is about wrestling. The NBA Finals that year helped set up the back story to this feud, which is why Malone is on this list.

Despite being blessed athletically, The Mailman shouldn't have quit his day job. While he had the size and showed a little potential, he wasn't exactly an expert at cutting promos. He was lucky to be teamed with DDP, himself a great promo.

The match itself was pretty awful, as to be expected when out of the four participants, two are basketball players that can't afford to get hurt since basketball is their day job, and one was an over-the-hill Hulk Hogan. (By the way, this was 12 years ago and Hogan was over the hill.) 

It was entertaining, but I'm sure Jazz fans would agree with me that they'd like to pretend that The Mailman's foray into the world of pro wrestling never happened.

As for the match, well, just like in the NBA, The Mailman couldn't deliver on Sundays. He did, however, execute a pretty sweet Diamond Cutter on The Worm, though.

9. Jeremy Piven and Dr. Ken Jeong

A decent Entourage episode would probably center around Vince agreeing to guest host Raw, bringing E, Drama and Turtle with him, with Ari trying to smooth things out with Vince McMahon because havoc would be caused with:

A. Drama trying (and failing) to hit on the Bella Twins

B. Vince successfully hooking up with either Kelly Kelly or Team Lay-Cool

C. Turtle getting an AA from Cena

D. Someone getting hurt.

Well, one of those things happened, and it was Dr. Ken getting a concussion. Since then WWE hasn't let its guest stars take bumps that serious. But my question is, why let Jeremy Piven jump off the top rope, and why let Dr. Ken take such a drastic bump?

8. Pete Rose

Baseball's all-time hits leader deserves better than this. 

I do wonder, though, if he would've given me odds on who'd walk out of all three of those WrestleMania's with the WWF Championship. 

7. Lawrence Taylor

This was more of an admission of how much trouble the WWF and pro wrestling in general was in during the mid-1990s.

First off, a WrestleMania in Hartford? No offense to Hartford, but look at the list of Wrestlemania venues all time. Hartford kind of sticks out like a sore thumb.

Secondly, even though the WWF Championship was up for grabs between Shawn Michaels and Kevin "Diesel" Nash, THIS was the main event.

As ferocious as he was on the gridiron, LT really looked sad wrestling in the WWF. It reeked of desperation and would probably be a harbinger of things to come for LT after his illustrious career as one of the greatest linebackers ever to play in the NFL.

It even reeked of desperation coming from the WWF, at the time having its worst year and its worst period.

Overall, WrestleMania XI is probably the worst WM of all time, and this match is very indicative of this.

I would, however, not mind a Joe Theismann vs. LT match. Theismann does have a score to settle.

6. Adam "Pacman" Jones

Now we get to TNA.

In 2007, Adam "Pacman" Jones had a very eventful year. 

It started in Vegas when he "made it rain," thus causing a big incident.

For his actions, and the fact that he was a repeat offender, he became the first NFL player to be suspended by Das Komissionar Roger Goodell and was also the first player to be suspended for an off the field violation that wasn't substance abuse.

Of course, a man's got to make a living somehow, so for Pacman it was only natural that he would do it by signing with TNA.

This too had its battles, though. The Tennessee Titans, who still owned his rights and wanted him to either come back to the team or get something of value for him later on in a trade, filed a restraining order against Pacman and TNA to bar him from signing with the company at all.

A settlement would be reached, however, that would allow him to make non-wrestling appearances with the organization and not allow him to take bumps or be hit with an object that could potentially injure him.

Because of this, Jones was placed in a tag team with Ron "The Truth" Killings, now known as R-Truth in WWE. And what do you do when you have a tag team where one "competitor" can't "compete?"

Why, you have Sting and Kurt Angle, two of the greatest to ever set foot in the ring, drop the TNA Tag Team titles to them. Makes PERFECT sense! (Well, in Vince Russo's world it does, to everyone else who's associated with the wrestling business or wrestling fans, this makes absolutely no sense!)

Finally, since its pretty hard to defend a tag team championship when you only have one wrestler in a tag team, TNA teamed up Killings with Consequences Creed. The team (which without Pacman would've been a great tag team on its own and had the perfect name for a tag team, Truth and Consequences) would face the legendary tag team of Brother Ray and Brother Devon (that's Bubba Ray and D-Von Dudley for you WWE marks who were probably wondering where the Dudley's have been) for the TNA tag team titles, with Team Pacman getting the win via DQ.

Pacman would serve as the manager for the team in their next match against the team of AJ Styles and Tomko. Pacman attempted to distract referee Earl Hebner by, of course, "Making it Rain" (throwing cash around) yet it only served to distract Hebner from counting a pin that Team Pacman had, and instead lead to Styles and Tomko winning the tag team belts.

A few days after that, TNA let their contract with Pacman expire, then he went back to the NFL, where he's now playing for the Cincinnati Bengals.

Honorable Mentions

Before we get to the top five, here are some honorable mentions, as well as the musical stylings of Curt Hennig and the West Texas Rednecks (not bad for guys who's main job is wrestling.)

Donald Trump buying Monday Night Raw for one week, and starting the Guest Host/Guest Star period.

Master P's No Limit Soldiers in WCW feuding with Curt Hennig, the Windhams and Bobby Duncum Jr.'s "West Texas Rednecks." (At least it gave us that great "Rap is Crap" song that I liked, even though I love rap.)

Jon "Napoleon Dynamite" Heder's foray into the ring wearing a Ric Flair-inspired robe when he guest hosted Raw.

Any TNA-NASCAR cross promotion. It's a good way of showing that TNA knows its core audience, but isn't a NASCAR crossover preaching to the choir?

5. Jay Leno

It actually started with the Dennis Rodman vs. Karl Malone feud, when they used "The Tonight Show" to hype up their match.

Then Jay Leno started making fun of Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff in some Tonight Show sketches, leading to Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan taking over "The Tonight Show" followed by Diamond Dallas Page coming in to save the day.

This set up a tag team match, Bischoff and Hogan vs. Leno and DDP, with special guest enforcer Kevin Eubanks (who I'll admit, was outstanding in his role, even in delivering a diamond cutter to Bischoff).

Now the match at Road Wild itself wasn't too bad, even though you had a winded Jay Leno coming in victorious at the end (thanks to Eubanks) followed by an attack by the nWo that was thwarted by Goldberg. On top of that, Leno was his usual self in his promos leading up to the match, which in this case is a good thing. However this is on the list because:

A. It was a main event at a PPV, which it shouldn't have been, especially since you had a battle royale between Goldberg, Curt Hennig, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Konnan, Sting, Lex Luger, The Giant and Scott Norton.

B. There's a lot of people I'd love to see Leno get in the ring with not named Eric Bischoff, like Conan, Arsenio Hall (Google Arsenio Hall-Jay Leno to find out why), David Letterman, Jeff Zucker, and Howard Stern.

It was entertaining, and Road Wild was usually a relatively low-profile pay-per-view for WCW anyway, so not too much harm was done in the match. Besides, it's not like Leno won the World Title; Russo was at WWF at the time!

4. Jenni "J-Woww" Farley

Now, J-Woww has the potential to be a WWE Diva. She has the personality, promo skills and the look that Vince McMahon loves so much. 

The best strategy for her if she really does want to pursue a career in the ring would be to follow the blueprint of fellow MTV Reality Show star The Miz and actually work her way to the top and in the process actually distance herself from Jersey Shore. At least that's what the WWE would do, and it's the best thing.

But TNA doesn't have time for that. After all this article itself will probably get more readers than TNA's PPVs get buys, so in their desperation for ratings, they need J-Woww in the ring immediately, which leads to, well, this. 

However what's funny is that TNA forgets one thing: if you are trying to make money off the Jersey Shore gravy train, you must remember that Jersey Shore airs at 10pm E/P (during the second hour of Impact) on your network's sister network, and gets much better promotion of your show and gets much higher ratings.

They could've waited at least until Jersey Shore ended its season, but instead had to just rush J-Woww out there. That's what makes this bad.

The Snooki and Situation impostors only make it worse. If you're going to have a Snooki impostor, she should at least be no taller than 5'0", not looking at J-Woww at eye level.

3. Robocop

Sting vs. Flair. Sounds like great wrestling.

Having the Four Horsemen help out Flair? Even better.

Having Robocop come out and save Sting? Um, WTF?

It was a "brilliant" attempt to cross promote the craptacular Robocop 3 with WCW. Hard to believe but Vince Russo had nothing to do with this!

The video speaks for itself, especially if you look on the face of Arn Anderson, who has an "F this!" face going as he leaves ringside.

2. Chuck Norris

Only thing that made this suck: no way Jeff Jarrett survives a kick from Chuck Norris.

This was the moment the business was exposed to me (I was 11 at the time).

1. David Arquette

You know what? I just noticed that Jeff Jarrett is either directly or indirectly responsible for about a fourth of this list. You would think that someone who grew up in the business would know better. (Granted in two of them it wasn't his choice.)

Actually, DDP seems to be around celebs too. Just a bit weird if you ask me.

Anyways, did you doubt that this would be number one? In the ranks of the great WCW Champions that included Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, Sting, Hulk Hogan, Goldberg and Macho Man Randy Savage, there's David Arquette. 

Now, what's with WCW and cross promotions with crappy movies? Here they're trying to cross promote Ready To Rumble, which ironically has been a TBS mid-morning movie staple for the last few years, and itself a pretty bad film starring David Arquette.

Now they could've just brought in Arquette to manage or just make some personal appearances or something, but Vince Russo wanted to give the belt to Arquette, and in the process finish off the job of "The Fingerpoke of Doom" and kill any legacy that belt had once and for all. 

Now if you listen to him justify it, he'll say that it got WCW on the Entertainment page of USA Today. That tells me that Russo's in the wrong career.

Think about it, he should be offering up his services as a publicist to Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, LeBron James and others who have made PR mess-ups. I'd love to see how he spins Lindsay and Paris' problems as great because, "they land on the front cover of US Weekly because of their problems, they don't when they're living clean."

Imagine the job he'd do on LeBron's "The Decision." (Heat fans, I'm one of you, but you have to admit it didn't go down too well.)

He could claim that, "well it raised money for charity and it got him on the front page of every newspaper." 

No, better yet, a man of Russo's talents should instead go to Washington. He has the pedigree: a liar and a buffoon. Why isn't he in charge of Christine O'Donnell's campaign?

Acknowledgements

A Real Wrestler!

Special thanks to Vince McMahon, Vince Russo, Dixie Carter and Ted Turner for green lighting so many of these "wonderful" ideas. And special thanks to the annonymous strangers on YouTube who not only recorded these moments but decided to post them on YouTube to live on forever.

A really special thanks to TNA wrestling for not only green lighting these ideas, but posting them on YouTube themselves for all the world to see. 

And of course, a very special thanks to the mainstream fans who these appearances were used to try to cater to.

I know for the most part wrestling fans aren't interested in J-Woww, Jeremy Piven, et al. But football fans might want to see LT (no, not in a wrestling ring), movie fans might want to see David Arquette (not really unless he's playing Dewey in Scream as his career would tell you), Utah Jazz fans wanted to see Malone beat Rodman (in the 1998 Finals, not at Bash at the Beach), Bulls fans wanted to see Rodman beat Malone (ditto) and everyone wants to see Jay Leno (at 11:35 p.m. on NBC, not at 10 p.m. and in a wrestling PPV, the ratings back this up.)

One more thanks to you, the fellow professional wrestling fans, probably the smartest of all the sports fans (despite it not really being a true competitive sport), for putting up with this crap!

Let's just say this: if the NFL ever decides that the Super Bowl will be played between the Patriots and Saints, but Brady was replaced with special guest quarterback Justin Bieber and Drew Brees would be replaced by special guest quarterback Chris Brown, plus the special guest referee was some celebrity that knew nothing about the NFL, let alone how to officiate it, I'm not watching the Super Bowl.

As wrestling fans we can easily see beyond the promotional BS that they try to give us and enjoy it for the entertainment it is. If we hate someone we boo, if we love someone we cheer. That's it!

No trolling, no nasty words spit out, no childish arguments, no wishing harm on someone just because he decided to "take his talents to South Beach."

If other sports fans and people in general could engage in the same civilized debates about their views as the IWC does about John Cena, CM Punk and WWE vs. TNA, the world would be a much better place. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy the final picture!

Thomas Galicia has been a professional wrestling fan since the age of five when he saw WWF Superstars for the first time. He normally writes about football, basketball and baseball, but will always take time to debate professional wrestling.

He even calls it that as opposed to "Sports Entertainment" which he feels is an oxymoron because all sports are entertainment. Read his archive here, and follow him on twitter, @thomasgalicia.