The 8-Ball 04.26.12: Top 8 Wrestlers on Game Shows

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the 8-Ball. I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and this week, it’s time to play the game. Yes, I said it’s TIME TO PLAY THE GAME . . .

I have to admit it, aside from professional wrestling; game shows are probably my favorite form of television program. There’s something fun about playing along, and nothing beats the schadenfreude of seeing a smug contestant crash and burn. So, if you can combine pro wrestling and game shows, I tend to be a pretty happy camper.

In what will be a pretty quick and dirty version of the column due to my schedule this week, here is a countdown of my eight favorite appearances of professional wrestlers on game shows.

Comedy Central’s Distraction, the United States version of which aired in 2005 and 2006 was a pretty underrated little game show in my opinion. The premise was simple: Contestants answered relatively easy trivia questions but did so while doing something that diverted their focus, such as sitting under a row of crapping pigeons or having their buzzer surrounded by cacti. On a handful of episodes, the three man team of Samoa Joe, Frankie Kazarian, and Christopher Daniels (in his Curry Man garb) would appear and perform wrestling holds on the hapless contestants while questions were shouted at them by host Jimmy Carr. This was one of the few times that TNA has managed to get some halfway decent mainstream exposure for its wrestlers, and it was good for a laugh . . . even if there were a few too many fat jokes at poor Samoa Joe’s expense.

There is somewhat of an inside joke in the entertainment industry that showing up on Hollywood Squares is a sure-fire sign that your career is dead. When Hulk Hogan appeared on the syndicated version of the show in 2002, that wasn’t quite the case. Granted, he was on a bit of hiatus from WWE, as he was coming off of the angle in which he had his ribs crushed by Brock Lesnar, but he was still under contract to the company and would have one last big run that included a rematch against the Rock and a Wrestlemania battle with Vince McMahon. Perhaps because he was still active in WWE, the Hulkster managed to come off as a big star despite his surroundings, and he even got out some solid plugs for his still-new autobiography, Hulk Still Rules. Anytime you can get Hogan interacting with Whoopi Goldberg, you know that you’ve got some golden television programming.

Ray Combs, who hosted the Family Feud from 1988 through 1994, was reportedly a huge professional wrestling fan, and he appeared at both Wrestlemania VIII and the 1993 Survivor Series. Given Combs’ fandom, it was only natural that there would be pro wrestlers playing the Feud. There were several editions of the show which featured WWF wrestlers and even the “stars” of the short-lived World Bodybuilding Federation, but, for my money, the best wrestling-related Family Feuds were the episodes that pitted WCW wrestlers against the ladies of GLOW. Why were they so great? There are two reasons. The first is that, even though the companies were not in direct competition, it was still a very rare cross-promotion between two wrestling companies, which seemed like a special treat to fans. The second is Jackie Stallone, the pseudo-celebrity mother of Sylvester Stallone who somehow got hooked up with GLOW. She was remarkably stupid, and watching her bumble her way through the game completely oblivious to the rules is worth the price of admission.

For several months in 2001 and 2002, The Weakest Link was the hottest U.S. television property that one could imagine. During that time period, the WWF, which was slowly declining from its Attitude Era mega-popularity, managed to book several of its stars to compete on two episodes of the show. This was an interesting one to watch because the individuals who did well – including Kane and Bubba Ray Dudley – were surprising and in part because it is one of the few instances of wrestlers appearing in outside media that actually played into WWF storylines. Specifically, the Rock used Booker T.’s historically miserable performance on the show (the man thought that Thanksgiving took place in October, for Christ’s sake) as fodder to mock the Book-man in promos building up their TV matches. This is something virtually every Attitude Era fan remembers, and that justifies it placing on this list.

Los Cincos Magnificos was the Mexican version of Celebrity Circus, a competition television series which first aired in Australia in 2005 and received an American version in in 2008. For some reason, Magnificos, which was on the air in 2007, became INCREDIBLY popular south of the border, much more than the U.S. version was here and perhaps even more popular than the original Aussie version was in its country. One of the celebrities involved in the program was Perro Aguayo, Jr., a second generation luchador who had a promising career already but was launched into absolute mega-stardom as a result of his appearance on the reality television program. Aguayo legitimately became the hottest property in all of lucha libre for a period of time, though, unfortunately, his ego and personal demons lead to a series of poor career choices that have left him a virtual persona non grata today.

There was a period of time during which I was an insomniac. I wasn’t just a garden variety insomniac, though. I was an insomniac with a subscription to the Game Show Network. This meant that I was exposed to all manner of reruns from the 1950s, including the Fabulous Moolah on To Tell the Truth. The concept of the show was that three individuals would appear before a panel of celebrities and would each claim to be the same person with an unusual talent or occupation. The celebrities would then be charged with asking questions to determine which of the three people was the genuine article. Moolah appeared next to two men, each claiming to be a professional wrestling champion and leading to a fun reveal to the celebrities, who could not fathom a female wrestler existing. The episode was so popular that Moolah was actually brought back to do it all over again when a new version of To Tell the Truth was produced in the 1970s.

This is essentially the American version of Perro Aguayo, Jr. on Los Cincos Magnificos. A reality television program took a professional wrestler, put him/her into something that wound up achieving a surprising amount of mainstream popularity, and the result was the wrestler being accepted by a new audience by whom he/she probably never would have been accepted before. The difference is that, while CMLL and the lucha libre community as a whole did everything that it could in order capitalize on the newfound popularity that Perro had through Magnificos, WWE barely put Stacy Keibler on television after her time on Dancing with the Stars and then inexplicably released her, while fans acted like she no longer belonged to the sport. However, Keibler’s appearance still ranks high on this list, because it still wound up portraying professional wrestling in a positive light in mainstream America and, if the rumors are any indication, may still allow Ms. Keibler to break through into mainstream acting. Heck, at the very least, she got George Clooney out of it.

I have to admit that this might be a little bit obscure for a number one selection, but I have to let my personal biases win out this week. I am a child of the 1980s, and there is no understating the reverence that those of us who grew up in the 1980s and had access to cable television had for Double Dare. It was essentially to kids what Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune are to adults. In a brilliant bit of cross-promotion, the WWF sent Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, at the time the embattled co-hosts of Prime Time Wrestling to compete on an episode of Double Dare

The episode is very entertaining even today, as it’s interesting to watch through adult eyes. Heenan is very clearly out to win the game at all costs, as he feeds his young partner answers to trivia questions and takes a no-nonsense approach to physical challenges. Monsoon, meanwhile, seems more focused on allowing his younger partner to be the star of the team, and the result is that Monsoon loses while Heenan takes home the W. And, though I won’t spoil the ending for those of you who want to watch the full video above, I will say that it is delightfully pro-wrestling-esque, with a couple of guys taking bumps and a finish to the obstacle course that just miiiiiight have been laid out in advance with all of the participants involved.

If you’re like me and love some Gorilla and the Brian, you need to be sure to check this one out.