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:
“The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935)
“My list of things I never pictured myself saying when I pictured myself as a parent has grown over the years.”
—Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)
“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)
“Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.”
—Paul Tillich (1886–1965)
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
—Bible: New Testament Ephesians 6:12.
“Fear of error which everything recalls to me at every moment of the flight of my ideas, this mania for control, makes men prefer reason’s imagination to the imagination of the senses. And yet it is always the imagination alone which is at work.”
—Louis Aragon (1897–1982)