10 Things You Probably Never Knew About WrestleMania 2

1. Celebs, Celebs, Celebs

If there’s one thing that Vince McMahon learned between WM 2 and WM III it was to cut WAYYYYYYY down on the number of celebrities that were a part of the event.

Counting the past and present (at the time) NFL Players that were part of the Chicago Battle Royal, the list of celebrities for the event stood at 26, a crazy number as anytime you looked there was another actor, singer or D list celeb being brought into the ring or waving to the crowd.

Here’s from Wikipedia the crazy list of celebs on hand for Mania 2:

Ray Charles sang a rendition of “America the Beautiful” before the show at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York. Celebrity guests in attendance for the New York portion of WrestleMania 2 included Cab Calloway, Darryl Dawkins, G. Gordon Liddy, Joan Rivers, Joe Frazier, Lou Duva, Mr. T, Ray Charles, Herb and Susan Saint James.[18] Celebrity guests in attendance for the Chicago portion of WrestleMania 2 included Clara Peller, Dick Butkus, Ed Jones, Ozzy Osbourne, Bill Fralic, Ernie Holmes, Harvey Martin, Jim Covert, Russ Francis, William Perry, and Cathy Lee Crosby. Celebrity guests in attendance for the Los Angeles portion of WrestleMania 2 included Ricky Schroder, Robert Conrad, Tommy Lasorda, and Elvira.

Personally I never remember seeing Cab Callowa or Darryl Dawkins on screen, and I think Liddy was a guest judge in the boxing match. Peller, who was known for the famous Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef” commercials, was 84 when he waddled into the ring as the guest time keeper for the battle royal.

If there was ever a term for ‘overkill,’ this was it. McMahon’s drive to have celeb after celeb come out for whatever reason took away from the wrestlers, and within a year he finally got it right when he went from 26 celebs down to three, and the crowd at the Silverdome swelled to over 90,000 for the biggest Mania of all-time.

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