Top 5 celebrity angles in pro wrestling

2. Celebrity in Pro Wrestling - Mike Tyson (WWE/F)

Mike Tyson

Mike Tyson may not be involved in the best celebrity angle in pro wrestling history, but when it comes to WWE/F, it may be the most important. WCW was the pro wrestling promotion that took the world by storm in the nineties. With the birth of the NWO, Vince McMahon was losing the ratings war every week.

With WWE ratings dropping, advertisers leaving, and the fact that their top star, Bret Hart, was dropping the company for their number one competition, Vince McMahon and WWE had to do something big. WWE couldn't compete with the type of money that WCW was throwing at talent, but Vince handed out a last-minute, hail-Mary payday to one man: Mike Tyson.

Tyson was suspended from the sport of boxing following the Evander Holyfield debacle and was also fined $150,000. Vince saw this as a chance to pounce and offered Tyson $3.5M to have him be the special guest enforcer for Shawn Michaels vs Stone Cold at WrestleMania XIV.

WWE used Tyson's celebrity in the absolute perfect way, using his image as the bad boy of boxing to his advantage in pro wrestling. The "Baddest Man on the Planet" aligned himself with Michales and D-Generation X after a big scuffle with Austin on an episode of RAW. But at WrestleMania XIV, Tyson turned on D-X and handed Austin, the biggest star in pro wrestling at the time, the WWF Championship.

The way the WWE used Tyson's image was ideal, and according to Eric Bischoff, as soon as he saw Mike Tyson in the WWE, he knew that the WCW "was in deep s***." Tyson was also inducted into the celebrity wing of the WWE Hall of Fame.