Does WWE’s Celebrity Involvement Really Help?

By Dean Siemon | Nov 13, 2015

It’s understandable to help create more awareness for WWE by having celebrities and athletes get involved, but does it truly benefit the WWE?

I’ll admit I was watching this week’s episode of Raw while working on some writing projects. During the Sheamus and Cesaro match, I looked up long enough to see Manchester United star Wayne Rooney slap Wade Barrett. The crowd in London, England, cheered since Rooney is one of the biggest soccer – er, I mean football – in that part of the world.

As a fan here in America, the word “meh” probably came out of my mouth as I went back to typing up a sentence. Honestly, there were a lot of flaws with the spot altogether when you consider that Barrett, who is a former bare-knuckle boxer, just fell from a slap by someone of smaller stature.

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This isn’t the first time, nor will it likely be the last, where a celebrity or professional athlete has some physical altercation in the WWE. It wasn’t too long ago when Stephen Amell of The Arrow began a feud with Stardust for a tag team match at SummerSlam last August. It’s a gimmick that dates back to the first WrestleMania where Mr. T had a rivalry with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper.

However, it seems like the creative staff at WWE has tried to get more points in the world of pop culture by having famous musicians, athletes, actors, comedians and others to either have a role as the special guest general manager or just a host who has one or two segments to promote a movie or some other type of project.

It can feel a little forced and awkward when Jared Fogle, the former Subway guy, was pretty much there to help promote sandwiches in a taped segment. So in many ways, the celebrity involvement here doesn’t really help the company in any way. There are moments where it works well, but it is all about how well it is carried out and followed up by the folks who are writing the story.

When it came to John Stewart costing John Cena the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at SummerSlam was definitely a moment where the celebrity involvement worked out well – people were talking about how the former Daily Show host ran out and hit Cena with a chair. Wrestling fans, well at least myself, were interested in knowing why and it made sense.

Stewart sort of represented the complaints that many wrestling fans write about online about how they don’t like the idea that Cena is likely going to break Ric Flair’s record for 16 world championship reigns. However, I sort of wish the storyline would have carried over more than just having Flair tell Stewart on Raw he did the wrong thing and have Cena deliver the Attitude Adjustment on Stewart.

Maybe I don’t give too much care about someone coming in and slapping a WWE superstar because we’ve seen a lot more special guests since 2009. There’s an oversaturation of “pop culture” entering WWE when it might be taking away time from actually developing quality storylines that branch into what ends up happening in the months that lead up to WrestleMania each year.

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Maybe the WWE can take a break from trying to book celebrities and hold off until we get to the big event in Arlington, Texas, with the grandest stage of them all – the perfect home for the stars to come out and shine.