The Secret to WWE's Success With Celebrity and How It Can Go Terribly Wrong

WWE can't seem to get out of its own way when it comes to celebrity usage. 

When it's good these days, it's great. Look at the IShowSpeed stuff. He's genuinely entertaining, genuinely getting eyeballs on the product and can do a good job in the ring when asked. 

WWE saw this and leaned into it in a big way for WrestleMania 42, sending LA Knight to his house to attack him. It's a global sensation of a clip that is getting picked up by every platform, including hard-news organizations. 

It's almost a little unfair to compare, but when WWE's celebrity usage is bad, it's rough. 

Look at Jelly Roll. 

Roll has, for some unfathomable reason, been chucked into the main-event feud between Randy Orton and Cody Rhodes. So much so, he was the focal point of a show-closing segment in which he took a finisher while the two Superstars were held back from each other (9:50 mark): 

It's so bad that it's almost comical. When fans begged for the decades of history between Rhodes and Orton to come up in a 'Mania feud, they didn't envision a guy named after a pastry taking center stage in the feud (and Matt Cardona). 

The amount of people who were worried that Jelly Roll ate an RKO is hard to say, but Rhodes was certainly asked to pretend like it was a big deal on the broadcast. The poor guy can't escape the Travis Scott-like stuff in his WrestleMania trips to save his life at this point. 

The mind wanders to when Jon Stewart got involved with Seth Rollins for no reason, as one of many examples of poor usage. 

And that's the dividing line on celebrity usage right now in WWE, really. We know, thanks to the blurred-lines era, that Roll has paid his dues and is doing his best. He's getting rewarded for that. But WWE blindly throwing him right into one of its two main event builds is just unfathomably misguided. 

IShowSpeed is more along the lines of a Bad Bunny, whose iconic entrances and in-ring work were a highlight of the last decade. It didn't hurt that he garnered global eyeballs on the product either. 

WWE went the musician route with Travis Scott and he never seemed actually invested as more than an aura-farmer for photographs, appeared to actually unsafely injure Rhodes and was a big part of the failed John Cena heel turn and one of the worst 'Mania main events of all time.

Not everyone is going to turn into a Logan Paul. He's a borderline prodigy who paid his dues and quickly, whether fans like it or not, surpassed a lot of the roster in the ring. 

But there needs to be a more measured pace to the whole thing. It shouldn't have to be a secret. It should just be common sense. 

Someone like Paul, or Bunny, or even Speed, eventually, should be near main-event scenes. There are tiers to this that WWE doesn't want to admit, to the point it has ruined things like 'Mania main events already. 

And hey, maybe WWE trusts that Roll won't pull a Scott and ruin things. But is he really drawing that much more attention to a…WrestleMania main event? Really?

There's a line where the product starts to feel like it's not for wrestling fans anymore. Celebrity usage lives on it. When WWE unearths a shocker who can go in the ring and draw eyeballs like Bunny, everyone wins.

When a celebrity who can't or could even ruin things gets a prominent spotlight, though, it just feels like those fans are being shoved aside so the suits in charge can woo temporary and even non-fans who won't stick around after 'Mania, anyway. 

WWE fans, at least, get Speed for the foreseeable future and all the fun antics that could bring. It's a great example, if not the best yet, but it's unfortunately just never enough for the promotion.