5 most talked about celebrity cameos in WWE history
Celebrities have a big part in wrestling history. It’s a business built less on athletic integrity than drawing as many eyes to the product as possible. This is particularly true of WWE. Early in his reign atop WWE, Vince McMahon recognized the value of celebrities in drawing mass media attention and legitimizing wrestling to the casual viewer.
Not all celebrity involvement is created equally, though. There are those celebrities one-off appearances that were fun enough in the moment, but not memorable in the long term. There are others that did not go well because the celebrity clearly didn’t know anything about the product they were getting involved with and were only there for a payday or for promotional purposes.
For better or for worse, though, there were those celebrities involved with WWE for a short time who nonetheless made an impact that had wrestling fans talking for years to follow. This article looks at five of the most talked about celebrity cameos in WWE history.
#5 Jeremy Piven
Jeremy Piven and Ken Jeong were guest hosts of Monday Night Raw in the era when the show featured a weekly rotation of celebrities serving as one-night authority figures. The results of this pattern were uneven, in part because different celebrities committed to the show to different degrees.
Piven seemed like he could do well as a guest host, based in his acting chops (including his loud-mouthed work in the role of Ari Gold on Entourage) not to mention that he was in good enough shape to get physically involved in the show.
While Jeong was generally annoying for his part, Piven was competent enough, right up until he was responsible for making a major announcement for SummerSlam—only to call it SummerFest.
The SummerFest gaff demonstrated Piven really didn’t know what he was doing in WWE, and lived on as a joke for fans and even, occasionally, on screen for years to follow.