World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is a billion-dollar publicly traded company.Its YouTube channel is the seventh-most subscribed. Dwayne Johnson calls it his home. Despite that, WWE and professional wrestling on the whole is still and probably always will be niche entertainment.
However, that has never stopped it from attracting interest from more mainstream celebrities. Mike Tyson to Arnold Schwarzenegger, for instance, are in WWE’s Hall of Fame even.
The following article takes a look at 10 celebrities who are one of us: suckers for good pro-wrestling. The writer excludes well-known celebrity pro-wrestling fans, including Wale, John Stewart, David Letterman, Adam Jones, and Maria Menounos, among others.
10 Gillian Jacobs
Gillian Jacobs shot to fame after playing lead roles in NBC’s Community and Netflix’s Love. The 37-year-old actor has a laundry list of quirky interests, with wrasslin’ being one of them. She is known to attend an odd Pro Wrestling Guerrilla show and a wrestling fan on Reddit even noted that she kick-started the “celebrities go to PWG” fad.
Regulars at PWG shows say she is more often found in attendance than most other celebrities, perhaps with the exception of Tools’ Adam Jones. She has even claimed to be a big fan of El Generico, Kevin Steen and Chris Hero.
9 Ron Funches
Going to pro-wrestling shows is one thing. Live-tweeting through most shows and being involved in the All Elite Wrestling (AEW) vs. WWE online warfare is on a different level altogether. Ron Funches, a comic and actor, has been rather open his love for pro-wrestling so much so that the writers of NBC sitcom Undateable made that a character trait of Shelly, the character he portrayed.
He has since talked about pro-wrestling on Conan, attended multiple PWG and Lucha Underground shows and even appeared on the Botchamania show at Starrcast.
8 Macaulay Culkin
This one is a little more obvious than the others. Macaulay Culkin has appeared on WWE multiple times. However, it was not until he followed in the footsteps of Gillian Jacobs to become a celebrity independent wrestling superfan that the Internet fans deemed him one of their own.
At one point, Bar Wrestling even involved him in a spot with Swoggle. He even interviewed multiple WWE talents, such as Adam Cole, Paul Heyman, Braun Strowman, Aleister Black, and AJ Styles for his Bunny Ears Podcast ahead of WrestleMania 34 earlier this year.
7 Darren Fletcher
The North American fans may not know this man, but he is super popular in England, especially in Manchester, where he played for 20-time English soccer champions Manchester United.
The 35-year-old midfielder, most recently seen donning the Stoke City shirt, has attended many WWE shows, with United colleagues such as Wayne Rooney —who once punched his compatriot Stu Bennett on live WWE television — Michael Carrick and Wales legend Ryan Giggs. Most recently, he made headlines when he attended the WWE United Kingdom Championship with rugby veteran Eorl Crabtree two years ago.
6 Lilly Singh
Lilly Singh needs no introduction if you are a millennial. A former YouTube star, she became a sensation when she, a bisexual person of Indian descent, became a late-night show host earlier this year. Her show, A Little Late with Lilly Singh on NBC got off to a stuttering start, with murmurs of a cancelation, but she has reinvented herself to solidify the show.
She has already had John Cena on her show and is no stranger to the pro-wrestling business. She never hides her admiration for The Rock, sat front row WrestleMania and collaborated with Stephanie McMahon, Eva Marie and The Bella Twins on YouTube.
5 Jack Whitehall
Jack Whitehall has featured in American TV shows and performed in front of U.S. audiences enough to be a well-known actor and comic in the United States as well. Impact Wrestling, a show that has historically had a big following in the United Kingdom, even put announced he was in attendance when he attended a show when it was still called Total Nonstop Action.
The Bad Education star, who inserted multiple wrestling references in the BBC Three comedy show, became a household name among the more hardcore wrestling fans when he interviewed AEW founder Tony Khan for the promotion’s YouTube channel.
4 Post Malone
Post Malone is the coolest rapper alive today who is not named R-Truth or John Cena. The Congratulations singer even wore Steve Austin’s vest to his first-ever appearance at the BET awards in 2017, sending wrestling Twitter to a frenzy. Since then, he has only underlined his love for wrestling, by once going out for drinks with wrestling’s party animal Ric Flair and being choke-slammed by The Undertaker at one of his shows.
Machine Gun Kelly has been power-bombed by Kevin Owens but, let us face it, Post Malone takes the cake for the best rapper wrestling fan.
3 Christian Fuchs
For the uninitiated, Christian Fuchs is a 33-year-old footballer who was integral to Leicester City’s historic Premier League title win in 2016. The Austrian is less popular than Darren Fletcher by all means, but he has proven to be as big a wrestling fan as any other celebrity on this article.
He did an impressive impression of The Rock on a soccer YouTube channel and once celebrated a goal doing the D-Generation X crotch chop. He frequently tweets about pro-wrestling and even once appeared to challenge The Undertaker for a match via a tweet that received a grand total of nine retweets.
2 Aziz Ansari
Parks and Recreation fans know him as Tom Haverford and fans of Master of None know him as Dev Shah. A stand-up comic, actor and writer, Aziz Ansari is not as dedicated a fan as the others on this list, as it is only safe to say he only dabbles. His brother, Aniz Ansari, however, is a huge wrestling fan who goes to the extent of listening to wrestling podcasts in addition to just watching wrestling.
His fandom has clearly passed on to his brother, Aziz, as evidenced by wrestling references on Master of None and his appearances in the audience in a few wrestling shows, including WWE’s live event at Madison Square Garden three years ago with his brother.
1 Michael Jackson
The fans are never quick to believe wrestlers and promoters as they are always looking to work them. The Internet fans respect only a handful of old hands. When someone like Jim Ross says something, they believe it without a second thought. When he said Michael Jackson followed pro-wrestling, not many doubted him. After all, he is no Hulk Hogan or Vince Russo, is he?
The AEW commentator recalled an incident post his death in which the pop icon asked his wife days after Kane choke-slammed him on a TV show, “Is Jim Ross okay?” He even noted that the Jackson family members bombarded her with questions about wrestling at a party.