The Squared Circle on The Silver Screen: Wrestler Cameos in Film

By Dylan Schmidt

This month, the Revival House showcased The Princess Bride, which costars Andre the Giant as the beloved friendly giant Fezzik. To celebrate this month’s RH selection, I’d like to share my five favorite pro wrestler cameos in film.

#5: Ernest ‘The Cat” Miller (The Wrestler, 2008)

The Wrestler features multiple cameos from real-life pro wrestlers (including the infamous death match wrestler Necro Butcher), but the final match with The Ayatollah, The Ram’s greatest rival, is my favorite. Played by Ernest “The Cat” Miller, a former WCW and WWE employee, The Ayatollah is almost the antithesis of Randy; a former wrestler whose life went OK after his retirement, who only wrestles for fun. Filmed at an actual Ring of Honor event, the ending is one of my favorite scenes in the film.

#4: Hulk Hogan (Rocky III, 1982)

In the early 1980’s Hulk Hogan was what a wrestling fan would call a ‘heel’, or a bad guy wrestler. His character was, in fact, very similar to Thunderlips, the brash, flamboyant challenger to Rocky for a charity bout of ‘Boxer vs. Wrestler’. Originally, Hogan was supposed to turn down the role at insistence of then-boss, WWF owner Vincent J. McMahon (father of current WWE owner Vincent K. McMahon). When he decided to go film anyway, h was fired from the WWF. Luckily for him, he would be hired back by 1983 by the father’s son, just in time to kick off the long reign of Hulkamania in the wrestling world.

#3: Randy Savage (Spider-Man, 2002)

“BOOOONESAW is READYYYYY!” How could I make a list like this without the Macho Man? Savage plays a small, but kind of pivotal, part in the legend of Sam Rami’s Spider-Man. The newly-named Spider-Man is tasked with surviving three minutes in the ring with Bonesaw McGraw, a pro wrestler who doesn’t have Peter’s best interest in mind, for a cash prize. Savage came up with the idea of Bonesaw himself, after learning the original character he would be playing would be similar to his arch-nemesis, Hulk Hogan. What little screen time Savage is given, he sure makes the most of it, chewing the scenery for everything it’s worth.

#2: Chris Jericho, Big Show, Mark Henry, The Great Khali, MVP, and Kane (MacGruber, 2010)

After being forced out of self-imposed retirement, MacGruber decides he needs to get his team back together again to save the world. So begins a montage featuring multiple then-current WWE wrestlers. Now that MacGruber has all of these imposing figures with him, there’s no way he can fail his mission…unless he accidentally blows them all up with homemade plastic explosive while they all sit in his van.

#1: Jerry “The King” Lawler (Man on the Moon, 1999)

Here’s where we get meta. In the early 80’s, comedian Andy Kaufman began a feud with Memphis wrestling legend and later WWE color commentator Jerry “The King” Lawler. This feud would escalate to the point where they had a match in which Lawler would piledrive Kaufman, severely injuring his neck. Soon after, the two would appear on Late Night with David Letterman, where the two would get into an altercation on-air. All of this turned out to be a ‘work’, of course; Lawler and Kaufman were actually friends. This scene was recreated very well, with Lawler actually growing his goatee out and fixing his hair the exact way he had it in 1982 to better play his role as himself.  Not too bad, considering he was 17 years older.