Ranking the 10 Best Celebrity Cameos in WrestleMania History
Celebrities have been synonymous with WrestleMania since its inaugural event in 1985.
One of the calling cards of that first WrestleMania at Madison Square Garden was the idea that pro wrestling could come together with sports and music for an ultimate night of American pop culture. There was even a Hollywood celebrity competing in the main event of the first WrestleMania.
And as WrestleMania grew bigger and better each year, WWE kept bringing back celebrities. Nearly every single early WrestleMania has featured stars from the worlds of Hollywood, sports and music. They have served as guest commentators, referees, timekeepers and interviewers. And yes, sometimes even as competitors.
Our rankings below considered many factors, including the impact on business that each celebrity had, how memorable their appearance was, their position on the card and their ability to jell naturally with the WWE product.
10. Bob Uecker
1 of 10
“Mr. Baseball” played an extremely memorable role as part of both WrestleMania 3 and 4. As the 1980s golden age of wrestling appeared to be reaching its apex, Uecker was there alongside Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan for some of the biggest moments in wrestling history to that point.
Not only did Uecker serve as the guest ring announcer for Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant at the Pontiac Silverdome for WrestleMania 3, arguably the most important match in WWE history, but he also appeared on commentary alongside Jesse Ventura and Gorilla Monsoon. As one would expect, he was hilarious in that role.
Uecker followed it up the next year at WrestleMania 4, once again serving as a guest commentator, ring announcer and interviewer. Who could ever forget his backstage interview with Andre the Giant that resulted in Andre wrapping his hands around Uecker’s neck? It’s one of the most iconic moments in WWE history.
9. Pete Rose
2 of 10
MLB’s all-time hits leader appeared at four WrestleMania events total. His three consecutive appearances from 1998 to 2000 included actively participating in the show itself, while his final appearance in 2004 was for his induction into the Hall of Fame.
Rose’s first appearance seemed simple enough, serving as a guest ring announcer. He came out to the ring and proceeded to insult the Boston crowd, bringing up the Cincinnati Reds’ victory over the Boston Red Sox in the 1975 World Series. The boos for Rose were deafening until Kane emerged down the ramp.
And then, in a segment that received a ton of airplay across sports coverage at the time, he proceeded to take Kane’s Tombstone in the middle of the ring. Outside of the athletes who had competed in matches, Rose’s appearance was the most physically impressive for a celebrity at WrestleMania.
Rose getting physically assaulted by Kane became a tradition and was repeated the following year, and the year after that, too.
8. Muhammad Ali
3 of 10Our previous two entrants certainly did more across their respective WrestleMania broadcasts, but Ali lands above them based on his star power alone.
When Ali appeared at the inaugural WrestleMania in 1985, he was undoubtedly the most famous athlete on the planet. Vince McMahon landing him for a show that his company’s future relied on was quite the coup. It wasn’t Ali’s first foray into the world of wrestling, having previously been involved in encounters with Gorilla Monsoon and Antonio Inoki in 1976. The Inoki encounter was even broadcast on closed-circuit (the predecessor to PPV).
There was no physicality for Ali at WrestleMania, but his mere presence on the show ensured that every serious sports report in the country would need to cover the event. Ali’s official role at WrestleMania was as the guest referee for the main event that featured Hulk Hogan and Mr. T against “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff.
7. Floyd Mayweather Jr.
4 of 10Mayweather had long been one of the biggest draws in the PPV universe when it came to boxing, and he brought that drawing power to WWE with a No Disqualification match against Big Show at WrestleMania 24.
While Ric Flair’s “retirement match” against Shawn Michaels on that night probably deserves the bulk of the credit for the one million-plus buys that WrestleMania 24 drew on PPV, there’s no question that some curious boxing fans bought the show, too.
Big Show vs. “Money” Mayweather was no five-star classic, to say the least, but it once again ensured mainstream sports coverage for WWE at a time when business as a whole had been starting to trend down slightly.
WrestleMania 24’s one million buys worldwide was a figure that wouldn’t be reached again until WrestleMania 27 three years later.
6. Bad Bunny
5 of 10Bad Bunny has wrestled three times for WWE, and his first time doing so was on The Grandest Stage of Them All at 2021’s WrestleMania 37.
In a tag team match alongside Damian Priest, Bad Bunny took on John Morrison and The Miz in Tampa, Florida. Right away, Bunny blew away even the most skeptical of critics, coming across as a natural inside the squared circle. It was a sign of more things to come.
He followed up that successful debut with a Royal Rumble appearance in 2022 and a phenomenal match against Damian Priest at Backlash 2023 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. That bout was set up by Bunny’s second WrestleMania appearance, which occurred one month earlier at WrestleMania 39 in Los Angeles.
Bunny appeared as a guest commentator during the Rey Mysterio vs. Dominik Mysterio match at WrestleMania 39. He ultimately got involved in the finish of the bout, helping Rey defeat his son. Priest was out for revenge for his Judgment Day partner (Dominik) the following month at Backlash.
Bunny’s WrestleMania appearances coincided with the most successful years of his musical career thus far—he was the most streamed artist on Spotify from 2020 to 2022. The star power that he brought to WrestleMania is undeniable, and his seamless transition to the squared circle left little doubt that he’d be welcomed back in WWE at any point in the future.
5. Donald Trump
6 of 10
The current president of the United States has a long history with professional wrestling, which began in 1988 when Trump was involved with hosting WrestleMania 4 at Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall (advertised as Trump Plaza on the broadcast).
The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino across the street from Boardwalk Hall served as the home base for much of the WWE staff during WrestleMania. Trump himself was featured heavily in the buildup to the show, and it was the start of a long relationship between he and the McMahon family.
The following year, WrestleMania 5 returned to Boardwalk Hall and Trump’s hotel and casino, marking the only time in WrestleMania history when the same venue has hosted the event in consecutive years.
Atlantic City wasn’t the only time that Trump was visible on television during a WrestleMania broadcast. He attended WrestleMania 7 in Los Angeles as well, sitting in the middle of the front row directly opposite the hard camera.
However, Trump’s return to WWE for an appearance at WrestleMania 23 in 2007 shows the lasting power he had with wrestling fans. This time, he was directly involved in storyline fashion for what was billed as the “Battle of the Billionaires.” Trump was in the corner of Bobby Lashley as Lashley took on Vince McMahon’s choice, Umaga, and Stone Cold Steve Austin served as guest referee. The show did more than 1.2 million PPV buys, an all-time record for the company at the time.
4. Lawrence Taylor
7 of 10Taylor’s appearance at WrestleMania 11 in 1995 occurred during one of the biggest down periods in WWE history. The previous summer, Vince McMahon was acquitted in the infamous steroid trial, yet the damage it had on the company is hard to deny. McMahon was also accused of rape in 1992.
With that as the backdrop, it was a very big deal for an NFL Hall of Famer and one of the greatest linebackers of all time to main-event WrestleMania. The WWE paid Taylor heavily to make it happen (reportedly $500,000). In hindsight, Shawn Michaels and Diesel should have main-evented the show, but Taylor vs. Bam Bam Bigelow was a spectacle.
WrestleMania 11 had a surprising number of top-tier stars despite being held in the smallest city to ever host the event (Hartford, Connecticut). Pamela Anderson, Jenny McCarthy, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Reggie White, Steve McMichael, Salt-N-Pepa, and more. Did Taylor’s association with the event make these appearances more likely? It’s hard to say for certain, but it couldn’t have hurt.
And of course, the mainstream sports media were in attendance to cover the festivities. Considering the state of WWE in early 1995, this kind of exposure wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.
WrestleMania 11 did a 1.30 PPV buy rate. WWE wouldn’t draw a PPV number that high again until WrestleMania 14 three years later.
3. Cyndi Lauper
8 of 10
The “Rock and Wrestling Connection” that helped drive the success of the first WrestleMania began with the involvement of Cyndi Lauper.
Lauper was pop royalty in the mid-1980s, and her involvement with WWE created a massive crossover opportunity for the wrestling business in a way that hadn’t been seen given the widespread availability of cable television by 1985.
Sure, stars like Andy Kaufman and even Muhammad Ali had been involved with the wrestling business in the years prior to WrestleMania, but that was mostly without the exposure of national television. Lauper helped deliver MTV, which aired “The Brawl to End It All” in July 1984 and “The War to Settle the Score” one month before the inaugural WrestleMania.
Lauper’s involvement with wrestling began when “Captain” Lou Albano was cast in her music video for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” The two developed a feud that played out on TV and broke through into American pop culture.
Her time in the business climaxed when Lauper managed Wendi Richter to her WWE Women’s Championship victory over Leilani Kai at WrestleMania, and there’s no denying that Lauper’s star power was a major factor in the success of the show.
2. Mr. T
9 of 10As one of the stars of The A-Team, Mr. T was one of the biggest action stars in Hollywood in 1985, and his alliance with Hulk Hogan made a lot of sense—they had both been in Rocky III a couple of years earlier.
While Hogan was certainly starting to break through to the mainstream as WWE built up to the first WrestleMania, a significant reason for this was his association with Mr. T and Cyndi Lauper. The duo of Hogan and Mr. T even hosted Saturday Night Live the night before WrestleMania 1.
In the main event of that first WrestleMania, Mr. T and Hogan took on “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff. The match also featured involvement from Ali (guest referee), Liberace (guest timekeeper) and Billy Martin (guest ring announcer). That is star power that few wrestling matches in history can compete with.
It’s a legitimate question whether the first WrestleMania show would have been a success without the involvement of Mr. T and Lauper, as they helped make the show a genuine pop cultural event. And it’s hard to imagine Hogan getting booked to host SNL without Mr. T at his side.
Mr. T returned for a boxing match against Roddy Piper the following year at WrestleMania 2. The less said about that one, the better. Needless to say, his ranking on this list is exclusively due to his (major) contributions to the first WrestleMania.
While both Lauper and Mr. T contributed in a major way to the success of that show, Mr. T ranks slightly ahead of Lauper on our list due to his participation in a main-event storyline. Plus, the benefits for Hogan in associating with someone like Mr. T proved valuable in elevating his own name.
1. Mike Tyson
10 of 10The new Attitude Era was picking up steam heading into 1998, and the year started off with a bang as Mike Tyson made an appearance at the Royal Rumble.
Tyson was initially supposed to make his WWE debut eight years earlier on a February 1990 edition of The Main Event on NBC, serving as a guest referee for Hulk Hogan vs. Macho Man Randy Savage. However, Tyson’s shocking loss to Buster Douglas 12 days earlier in Tokyo changed plans, and Douglas took his spot on The Main Event.
Tyson’s appearance in the buildup to WrestleMania in 1998 ultimately meant much more for WWE’s business than the 1990 appearance would have. Despite two high-profile losses to Evander Holyfield in 1996 and 1997, Tyson was still one of the biggest PPV draws in the world.
In the buildup to WrestleMania 14, Tyson was a key ingredient. First, he got into a pull-apart with Stone Cold Steve Austin on Monday Night Raw, and he followed that up by joining WWE Champion Shawn Michaels in DX. Alongside Michaels, Triple H and Chyna, Tyson would appear multiple times in the buildup to WrestleMania in Boston.
However, wrestling fans would soon find out that Tyson’s alliance with DX wasn’t as strong as it seemed. He turned on Michaels in the main event of WrestleMania, first counting the pinfall for Austin and then knocking out Michaels post-match. “Iron Mike” ended the show celebrating alongside Austin as Stone Cold hoisted the WWE Championship for the first time.
WrestleMania 14 was a resounding success, drawing the largest PPV buy rate for the company since WrestleMania 8. There’s little question that Tyson’s involvement, coupled with the surging stardom of Austin, is a major reason. It was an iconic moment that helped kick off a period when WWE became more mainstream than ever before. For that reason, Tyson ranks at the top of our list.
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