WrestleMania is a professional wrestling pay-per-view event produced by the promotion World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), formerly known as the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). The events feature wrestlers from the promotion's roster competing in a variety of professional wrestling match types, performances with pre-determined outcomes between wrestlers with fictional personalities that are portrayed as real for the entertainment of the audience. The WrestleMania franchise debuted in 1985 with WrestleMania I, and has been produced annually since then. WrestleMania XXVIII is the most recent production.
Aside from professional wrestling performances, celebrity involvement has been a major key in the production of WrestleMania events. WWE involves celebrities in the WrestleMania events to gain more hype and media attention for the event, in this way receiving more attraction to the event, pay-per-view buys, and ticket sales. The celebrities involved with WrestleMania events have come from a range of occupations, including singing, acting, professional boxing, and modeling, and usually appear in non-wrestling roles, such as singing, promoting a subject, or managing wrestlers at ringside. There have been exceptions, however, in which celebrities have had a professional wrestling role.
One of the first celebrities to appear at the first WrestleMania was Mr. T, who wrestled in the main event in a tag team match with Hulk Hogan. Aretha Franklin appeared at the third WrestleMania and sang a rendition of "America the Beautiful." Franklin appeared 20 years later at WrestleMania 23 and sang another rendition of the same song. At times, WWE has inducted celebrities into their Hall of Fame. For example, Chicago Bears defensive lineman William Perry wrestled in a match that involved other NFL football players, and he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame as a "Celebrity Inductee" in 2006. Another celebrity was Mike Tyson, who appeared at WrestleMania XIV and was originally planned to enforce the ringside area, although he was involved in a physical altercation with Shawn Michaels (Michael Hickenbottom). Pete Rose has made the most celebrity appearances at WrestleMania, with four overall appearances. Overall, there have been 99 celebrities involved at WrestleMania: 32 athletes, 29 musicians, 19 actors, and 20 others from different backgrounds.
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, celebrities, involved, wrestle and/or mania:
“Do your children view themselves as successes or failures? Are they being encouraged to be inquisitive or passive? Are they afraid to challenge authority and to question assumptions? Do they feel comfortable adapting to change? Are they easily discouraged if they cannot arrive at a solution to a problem? The answers to those questions will give you a better appraisal of their education than any list of courses, grades, or test scores.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“We saw the machinery where murderers are now executed. Seven have been executed. The plan is better than the old one. It is quietly done. Only a few, at the most about thirty or forty, can witness [an execution]. It excites nobody outside of the list permitted to attend. I think the time for capital punishment has passed. I would abolish it. But while it lasts this is the best mode.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“Two months dead, I wrestle with your name
Whose separate letters make a paltry sum
That is not you.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)