Snoop Dogg, Ozzy Osbourne & WrestleMania's Weird History With Musical Guests

There are few spectacles like WrestleMania.

The annual 'Super Bowl of pro-wrestling' has been responsible for some of the most unforgettable moments in sports-entertainment history over its more-than-three-decade-long lifespan, and its 32nd iteration wrapped up from Arlington, Texas, mere hours ago, bringing with it a new attendance record of 101,763 ravenous fans.

Unsurprisingly, 'Mania has thus been used as a platform by all manner of other entertainers — actors, singers, musicians, dancers, sportspeople, you name it — throughout the years, but perhaps no affiliations have been so reliably bizarre as World Wrestling Entertainment's relationship with the music world.

Indeed, just last month it was announced that veteran rapper Snoop Dogg would be among the entrants to this year's WWE Hall Of Fame — a feat that has eluded even some of the most decorated grapplers of the past half-century, yet has been bestowed upon the toke-happy rhymesmith — to join the likes of fellow celebrity inductees Arnold Schwarzenegger (2015), Mr T (2014), Donald Trump (ugh, 2013), Mike Tyson (ugh, 2012), Drew Carey (uhhh?, 2011) and more.

Putting aside the fact that (other than dual appearances from Motorhead) WrestleMania in the 2000s looked like an ode to everything awful in music of the time — we're talking headline performances from Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock, here — even the musicians the WWE has contracted for the shows to not play songs tend to catch the raw end of the deal when it comes to required on-screen antics in exchange for exposure at 'Mania.

While Mike Tyson got to be a 'ringside enforcer' at WrestleMania XIV in 1998 and former New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor actually got to wrestle Bam Bam Bigelow at WrestleMania XI, guest musicians either perform the national anthem, an original song or two, or get relegated to insane duties for the sake of a little face time during the biggest event on pro-wrestling's annual calendar. More often than not, it's that last one.

Did you know, for instance, that...

Liberace was a timekeeper at WrestleMania I (1985)

Liberace is best-known for being a larger-than-life virtuoso, a pianist of great acclaim with a personality the size of most European countries, and for some reason, the WWE (then WWF) decided he would be best utilised performing the most remedial ringside task possible by serving as a guest timekeeper.

Timekeepers, in case you're unaware, do pretty much exactly what the job title describes. They ding the bell to signify the beginning of the match, ding it again when it's over, and look at a stopwatch in-between, not that exact match lengths matter in any but the most specific of circumstances.

Occasionally there's more to it — long-time timekeeper Mark Yeaton used to double as a referee as well as the guy who'd throw 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin his celebratory post-match beer cans — but, in this case, it just seems like a really strange and unnecessary way to shoehorn in an appearance from a world-famous musician to give the nascent pay-per-view an extra degree of clout that it perhaps needed in its earliest years.

Hey, it obviously worked to some extent.

ozzy osbourne managed a tag team at wrestlemania ii (1986)

The 'Prince Of Darkness' and godfather of heavy metal himself, Ozzy Osbourne, would have been a massive coup for the WWE back in the mid-'80s, when WrestleMania was still an unknown entity and yet to hit its record-breaking, seminal WrestleMania III event in 1987.

But, rather than have Ozzy come out and belt out a classic or two, as the company would do decades later with his contemporaries in Motorhead, the WWE decided to lump the singer in with his countrymen in a tag team called the British Bulldogs — individually, the late Davey Boy Smith and the Dynamite Kid (below, with Ozzy and Cap'n Lou Albano) — and give him an asinine ringside role as guest 'team manager' in their match against The Dream Team (Brutus Beefcake and Greg Valentine).

Similar to the timekeepers, managers actually don't do that much in the grand scheme of things. That doesn't mean they aren't well known or popular — for example, veteran grappler Cap'n Lou Albano enjoyed a lengthy run as a manager after stepping away from the ring, while The Undertaker's former mentor, the late Paul Bearer, made an entire career off accompanying other people to the squared circle — but, really, aside from acting as a mouthpiece for workers who can't cut a promo, or being a walking cover/accomplice for cheating, they really just spend their time circling the match and standing in the way of people in the front row.

Cab Calloway judged a boxing match between Mr. T and 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper at wrestlemania ii (1986)

As with pretty much every of its iterations, WrestleMania II was flush with celebrities. Along with Ozzy's managerial stint and an opening performance of America The Beautiful by Ray friggin' Charles, beloved jazz man Cab Calloway was also in attendance, only he actually had one of the harder tasks assigned to any guest in WrestleMania history: co-officiating a boxing match between the late 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper and random repeat 'Mania attendee Mr T.

Fortunately, Calloway didn't have the weight of the match riding solely on his shoulders — he shared judging duties with former chief operative for the White House Plumbers unit and convicted Watergate felon G. Gordon Liddy. Which is probably one of the weirder team-ups we've seen over the years.

snoop dogg was the master of ceremonies for the 'bunnymania' match at wrestlemania xxiv (2008)

If you've been spending this whole article unable to move past the fact that Snoop Dogg is a bona fide member of the WWE Hall Of Fame, this one's for you. At this point in time, Snoop's love for all things pro-wrestling is a well documented phenomenon; he's appeared on weekly live show Raw before (he hosted an episode in 2009), and has frequently mentioned the pastime in countless interviews. He even appeared at this year's event, adding a verse to the entrance theme of real-life cousin and Women's Championship contender Sasha Banks. 

None of that really goes any distance towards explaining how he ended up in charge of the so-called Playboy 'BunnyMania' lumberjack match at 2008's WrestleMania XXIV event, though. Or why there was a Playboy 'BunnyMania' lumberjack match to begin with.

"What the fuck is a lumberjack match?" you ask? Well, on the one hand, it's a regular match except the ring is arbitrarily surrounded by other wrestlers, ostensibly to prevent the combatants' escape, but, on the other hand, it really doesn't matter because this barely qualified as a wrestling match from the outset.

run-d.m.c wrote and performed a rap about wrestlemania at wrestlemania v (1989)

To be fair, rap's history with pro-wrestling actually goes back quite a ways, well before the days of Snoop Dogg presiding over glorified ogling sessions. In fact, one of the earliest such appearances from the genre was way back in 1989 at that year's WrestleMania V event, when lauded rap group Run-D.M.C. took to the ring to perform.

Unlike other musicians who would be conscripted to perform the national anthem — people such as Aretha Franklin (twice), Boyz II Men, Gladys Knight, John Legend, Little Richard, Willie Nelson, Ashanti and Aloe Blacc — Run D.M.C were instead asked to perform their purpose-built cut WrestleMania Rap, which was basically just a loosely connected chain of sports-entertainment jargon like "pile-driving" and "bodyslam" and saying the word "WrestleMania" a bunch. You'd think this would have been a bit of a slap in the face, but whatever — the people went wild for it, and the band didn't seem to hate the time they were having.

Besides, if you thought the concept of this performance was weird, wait till you see the promotional video for their appearance.

That is some '80s-ass marketing right there. "All right! I'll tell ya what, I like these guys!" bellows veteran announcer 'Mean' Gene Okerlund after the trio botch their promo, even though you just know he's no more listened to a Run-DMC song in his life than flown to the moon. Whatever puts butts in seats though, right?

At least you can watch their eventual performance to your heart's content over at the WWE's website.