WWE: Why RAW Needs More Guest Stars Like Hugh Jackman

Guest hosts, guest stars or special guest hosts—call them whatever you want. I call them complete and utter failures, for the most part.

The WWE instituted the guest star concept back in June 2009 to get more exposure and increase ratings for Monday Night Raw, but needless to say, the company has had its fair share of hits and misses since then.

We’ve seen guys like Shaquille O’Neal or Ben Roethlisberger come in to host Raw and show a true passion for the wrestling business. Clearly, they understood what was going on, and they at least watched wrestling while growing up or even still watch it to this day.

But for every Shaq or Big Ben, you had a Jeremy Piven or an Al Sharpton. Despite being an actor—and thus being paid to memorize lines—Piven managed to call SummerSlam “Summerfest,” and Sharpton was so out of touch with the WWE product that I’m not sure we could find any well-known celebrity who would be worse at hosting the show than he was.

Though guest stars like Piven, Sharpton, ZZ Top or Timbaland failed miserably for different reasons, there is one similarity between all the guest hosts who didn’t succeed: They didn’t care about the WWE and added absolutely nothing to the show they appeared on.

For the most part, they were there simply to promote a movie, TV show or something along those lines that nobody really cared about. They wanted to get their five or 10 minutes of TV time, plug whatever it is they needed to plug and then get the hell out of there.

That’s why Hugh Jackman succeeded where so many other guest stars failed.

Sure, like all the other guest hosts in the past, he was there to promote his upcoming movie Real Steel. But the WWE somehow found a way to tie his movie into a WWE storyline and, remarkably, have it make sense.

Jackman—who seemed like a WWE fan who was legitimately excited to be hosting Raw—told the crowd that his movie was all about the “ultimate underdog.” And who loves underdog stories more than just about anyone else?

Wrestling fans, that’s who.

Whereas most guest stars would just show the trailer for their movie and not relate it to the WWE whatsoever, Jackman used the message from his movie—someone overcoming odds—to do what WWE fans have been begging for for months now: give Zack Ryder a push.

Aside from some sporadic appearances in recent months, Ryder had been largely forgotten in the WWE, someone who was immensely popular on the Internet but couldn’t work his way onto TV each and every week.

Jackman changed that.

After hearing “We want Ryder!” chants from the crowd, Jackman grabbed a sign supporting Ryder, ran backstage and gave Ryder a match against the United States Champion, Dolph Ziggler. Ryder won the match, and the crowd popped huge for it.

Now, how many other guest hosts have done that?

Of course, we’ve seen the crowd really get into it when Shaq stared down The Big Show, and we got a ton of laughs from Bob Barker for his unintentional comedy. But no guest host that wasn’t a current or former wrestler played as big of a role in a storyline as Jackman.

That’s what guest hosts are supposed to be all about.

They aren’t supposed to promote crappy TV shows and then walk out of the arena. They aren’t supposed to show up under the influence and barely be able to talk—I’m looking at you, Timbaland.

The sole purpose of the Raw guest star is to add something to the show without taking TV time away from the WWE’s actual wrestlers.

Jackman did just that, and future Raw guest hosts should take notes