Top 50 Wrestlers in The Movies

Wrestling is amazing. It’s the primal joy of seeing two massive dudes smack the hell out of each other, right in front of you. It’s the simple spectacle of structured violence that is the basis that so much genre cinema thrives on.

Since the two things a wrestler needs most are impressive physicality and basic charisma, it’s no surprise so many of them have ended up in the movies. But as similar as the two art forms are, there’s also a world of difference. It’s one thing to be able to entertain a few thousand people live, it’s completely different thing recreating that with a camera close up on you over multiple takes. Plenty of grapplers have given awful performances on screen, but here are 50 of the best appearances by wrestlers in movies. There are the big names you’d expect, but there’s also weird Japanese and Mexican movies, jobbing guys who got their one shot at fame, and even respectable art house flicks. Ring the bell…

50: The Rock – Snitch

Snitch isn’t really a successful film. It’s based on an interesting true story, about a working class father who infiltrates a drug ring in order to save his son from prison, but despite including a rather stinging critique of American drug policy, the film itself is a rather uneven mix of Lifetime Original Movie and bland action film. What carries the movie though is The Rock at the centre of everything, deviating from the standard action hero archetype and really trying to play a real person (his man-mountain physique probably stops him from ever being 100% convincing as a regular Joe, though…). It’s good to see Rocky flexing his acting muscles, as well as just his bisceps.

49: Brodus Clay – No One Lives

The first of two appearances by cult Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura (Versus, Azumi, Midnight Meat Train), this WWE Studio thriller featured Brodus ‘The Funkasaurus’ Clay in a small role. Clay doesn’t do much before being killed off early, but his character provides the most entertaining moment of the film after he’s died. When his family of ne’er-do-wells find Clay’s corpse in the woods after psycho Luke Shaw has killed him, they carry him back to their secluded property in order to give him a proper burial. Little do they know that Shaw has gutted rather rotund Clay, and is hiding inside his dead body, meaning he jumps out when they least expect it and gets the rest of his crew.

48: John Cena, Brodus Clay, Michael Cole, Kane, AJ Lee, Santino Marella , The Miz, Triple H and Vince McMahon - Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery

I’m not going to pretend that this is a secret masterpiece or anything, but I think it deserves a place on this list just for the fact it’s actually a real thing that actually exists in the real world. Really.

47: Tyler Mane – X-Men

A journeyman wrestler in the later 80s and early 90s, most notably competing under the name ‘Big Sky’ in WCW, Tyler Mane eventually moved into acting, where his 6ft 8 stature lead him to end up playing a lot of imposing henchmen and the like. His most famous role came in Bryan Singer’s first X-Men film. Liev Schreiber would go on to give the character more depth in the first Wolverine solo film, but Mane makes a damn scary member of the Brotherhood of Mutants.

46: The Fabulous Freebirds - Highlander

The beautifully overblown 80s fantasy movie opens with Christopher Lambert’s Connor McLeod skulking around Madison Square Garden, watching a six-man tag match between the legendary faction The Fabulous Freebirds and the team of Greg Gagne, Jim Brunzell and The Tonga Kid. It’s great to see a big 80s wrestling match like this captured and edited on film, as opposed to cheap television video stock, and it makes a great little thematic prologue to the titanic battles that will come later in the film.

45: Sgt. Slaughter – GI Joe The Movie

Wrestlers are often described as real life cartoons, but patriotic hero (and occasional Iraqi sympathizer) Sgt. Slaughter actually became a cartoon character when he was immortalized in the GI Joe animated series and toyline (ok, there was also Hulk Hogan’s Rock N Wrestling, but GI Joe was way cooler than that). The Sarge even leant his voice to the series, and his appearance in the 1987 animated movie.

44: Nathan Jones – Troy

After spending seven years incarcerated in his native Australia for armed robbery, the 6 ft 10, 300 lb Nathan Jones eventually found his way to WWE via the world of powerlifting. He got an almost instant push due to his monstrous size, but left wrestling after a year or two, not being able to hack the gruelling travelling schedule. He soon found his way into cinema, and has squared off against both Jet Li and Tony Jaa onscreen. His most high-profile cinematic appearance comes in Wolfgang Petersen’s Trojan War epic Troy, where he’s memorably dispatched by Brad Pitt’s Achilles in the first reel.

43: Hulk Hogan – No Holds Barred

Until The Rock started billing himself as Dwayne Johnson again, Hulk Hogan as Rip “The Ripper” Thomas was the go-to image of movies starring wrestlers. Hogan’s first star vehicle, and the first real American attempt to build a film around a wrestler and his persona, it’s a very silly, goofy movie. It’s seemingly set in a world where TV execs will gladly put no rules bar fights on primetime TV, Hulk Hogan can wear wrestling gear to business meetings, and bad guys pee themselves. It’s not a good film, by any stretch of the imagination, but we can’t deny that there’s definitely a fun, nostalgic charm to the whole thing.

42: Stone Cold Steve Austin – Damage

Considering that during the WWF’s hallowed ‘Attitude Era’ Stone Cold was actually a bigger star than The Rock, it’s somewhat of a surprise that he never followed in the footsteps of Dwayne Johnson in movie success. He was equally as charismatic in the ring and had a persona that would be easily transferable to your bog standard action vehicle. But for some reason it wasn’t to be.

His first starring role was in The Condemned, a not-very-good rip off of The Running Man, full of horrible shaky-cam action and bad performances. That film’s failure meant that Austin’s leading man future would unfortunately be straight to DVD (though he did have supporting roles in things like The Expendables and Grown Ups 2). But then a strange thing happened. His first DTV movie, the bare-knuckle fighting movie Damage, was really rather good. It’s based around the really cheesy conceit that he’s fighting to earn enough money to pay for a little girl to have a heart transplant. The fights are pretty prosaic, but Austin genuinely does really well in the quite scenes, still being a Texas rattlesnake at heart, but a much more quiet and morose character than the hellraiser he was back in his wrestling heyday.

41: Terry Funk – Roadhouse

Hardcore wrestling legend Terry Funk appeared in a couple of movies in the 80s – including two with Sylvester Stallone, the wrestling drama Paradise Alley (which makes sense) and the hilarious mawkish arm-wrestling film Over The Top (less so). His most notable role however was popping up in the delightful Patrick Swayze zen-bouncer movie Roadhouse.

40: Kevin Nash – Magic Mike

Steven Soderbergh’s male stripper drama was somewhat of a treat for admirers of male bodies, with hot young things Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, and Matthew McConaughey all getting down – and grizzly old Kevin Nash, too. It’s hard to really embarrass a guy who used to unironically call himself Big Sexy, but his awkward shuffling at the back of the assorted routines is not great at all (though considering Nash wasn’t cleared to wrestle CM Punk back in 2011, it’s impressive that he took on a physical role of any kind). His casting is quite effective though – while all the attention is on the sexy young Tatum, Pettyfer etc, there’s a certain tragedy to someone still doing this particular job at Nash’s age. It’s something you can imagine Mickey Rourke’s Randy The Ram ending up doing (more on him later), and earlier this year it emerged that former WCW star Buff Bagwell was supposedly offering his services as a gigolo.

39: Abdullah The Butcher – Roaring Fire

This super-obscure Sonny Chiba film, which features an appearance from ultraviolent old schooler Abdullah The Butcher, a man whose head was busted open so many times and scarred so deep his party trick was balancing poker chips upright on his brow. Just having this massive, terrifying Arab-American wrestler running around this Japanese karate film is jaw-dropping. Just watch these clips, and tell me you don’t instantly want to see this film right now. Go on. You can’t can you?

38: Chris Jericho, Kane, MVP, Mark Henry, The Great Khali and The Big Show - MacGruber

Will Forte’s severely underrated MacGyver-spoofing Saturday Night Live spin-off has one of the cleverest – and funniest – uses of wrestlers in a film I’ve ever seen. In order to take down international supervillian Val Kilmer, Forte’s MacGruber put together a team of the most awesome badasses he can find – all of which are played by some WWE’s biggest stars of the time. After recruiting them all in a brilliantly clichéd ‘putting the team together montage,’ he accidently blows them all up with homemade C4.

37: Tor Johnson – Plan 9 From Outer Space

Often regarded as the worst film ever made, the magnum opus of the notorious Ed Wood is far from it. The worst film in the world is a boring one and Plan 9 is far from boring, if just because of its fascinating ineptitude. Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson, who also appeared in Wood’s Bride Of The Monster, played the detective investigating the alien antics and resurrections in a role that’s overshadowed his unmemorable in-ring career. Like Wood, there’s that bittersweet irony that had he starred in better but unremarkable films he’d have been long forgotten, but because of Plan 9’s incompetence, he lives on today in the hearts of cult film fans.

36: George “The Animal” Steele – Ed Wood

When Tim Burton brought the legend of Edward D Wood Jr to the big screen in 1994, with his reputation as ‘The world’s worst ever director” now firmly established, he turned to another wrestler for the role of Tor Johnson. WWE Hall Of Famer George “The Animal” Steele took the role, and brought a kind humanity to Johnson that many of those who worked with him were quick to put on record.

35: Goldberg – Santa’s Slay

The Jewish Bill Goldberg starring as a demonic evil Santa Claus doesn’t really suggest that this festive horror comedy is going to be anything but awful. Yet it’s genuinely a surprisingly enjoyable little film, which embraces its ridiculousness and just has fun with it. Plus there’s scene where Goldberg kicks a little yappy dog into a log fire.

34: Jesse Ventura – The Running Man

Wrestler, actor, Navy veteran, political commentator, and former Governor of Minnesota, Jesse The Body has rarely had lead roles but has had some great supporting parts. In The Running Man, his second collaboration with Arnold Schwarzenegger, he had a great little turn as Captain Freedom, the champion assassin of the futuristic game show turned media celebrity. He even has his own cheesy electro theme music by Axel F composer Harold Faltermeyer.

33: Andre The Giant – Conan The Destroyer

So you’re making a sequel to Conan, and you need someone who can look like they can be a legitimate threat to Schwarzenegger. There’s not many people on the planet who can do that, but director Richard Fleischer managed to find two – the 7ft 4 Andre The Giant and the 7ft 1 former NBA star Wilt Chamberlain. There’s a great on-set photo of Andre and Chamberlain hoisting up Schwarzenegger, which is just about the only picture ever taken that makes Arnie look like the little guy.

32: Kane – See No Evil

In wrestling continuity, Kane is supposedly the badly burned, abused brother of The Undertaker who wears a mask to cover his hideous scarring and is sometimes portrayed as a literal demon from hell. It’s surprising it took him so long to be cast in a horror movie. See No Evil is a pretty standard slasher movie, with Kane playing a pyscho madman who stalks teens doing community service through an abandoned hotel, but it’s greatly enlivened by some crazy moments (a girl who talks too much being force-fed her phone, a dog cocking its leg directly into a dead guy’s eye socket), and Kane’s generally batty persona. Even better are the interviews on the DVD, which Kane stays in character for and storms off halfway through.

31: The Rock – The Scorpion King

Schwarzenegger first made his mark as an action star playing Conan The Barbarian. If you’re trying to establish The Rock as the new Arnie, why not just copy his lead? After making his big screen debut in the opening scenes of The Mummy Returns (and popping up as an awful CGI scorpion monster during the finale), Rocky got his first starring role in this prequel to The Mummy films, which was basically just The Rock does Conan. Is it the best swords-and-sandals movie ever? No. Is it a damn fun one, starring The Rock? Hell yes.

30: The Big Show – The Waterboy

Paul Wight, aka The Big Show, aka ‘The World’s Largest Athlete” pops up as Captain Insane-o, the wrestling hero of Adam Sandler’s idiotic manchild. Considering that Big Show isn’t really known by wrestling fans as being that great on the mike, he does a great job of belittling Sandler when he discovers that he’s not actually a small child calling into a TV show to speak to his favourite grappler, but instead a grown adult who should know far better.

29: The Rock – Walking Tall

A remake of the 1973 film on the same, which itself was based on the story of true-life Tennessee folk hero Buford Pusser, Walking Tall is as generic an action movie set up as you can imagine. The Rock plays a US Special Forces sergeant who returns to his small town home to discover that an evil new casino owner is filling the town with drugs. With the local authorities turning a blind eye due to how much money the casino is bringing into the local economy, he decides to run for sheriff and clean up the town - no matter how much the evil casino man threatens to escalate things. And escalate things he does. It’s a simple nuts and bolts action drama, but it’s the sort thing The Rock is so naturally good in you can’t help but enjoy it.

28: John Cena – 12 Rounds

The WWE has repeatedly tried to make John Cena – the Hulk Hogan of the Facebook generation – into a mainstream action star, but they’ve never really succeeded. If it was still the 80s, his combination of generic good looks and impressive beefcake would have probably made him a megastar, but the world has moved on. He’s starred in a series of competent-but-forgettable action vehicles that have made little impression, but his stand out film by far is 12 Rounds, a rather blatant rip-off of Die Hard With A Vengeance. It’s elevated by being helmed by Renny Harlin, a reliable action movie old hand (he also made Die Hard 2), and a good villain in the form of The Wire and Game Of Thrones’ Aiden Gillan. With decent parts around him, Cena makes a solid leading man, and the film is a very enjoyable old school action throwback.

27: Ox Baker - Escape From New York

Two-thirds of the way through his journey across dystopian Manhattan, Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) finds himself in the middle of a ring in a modern day gladiatorial contest. His opponent is played by 6 ft 5 old school AWA and NWA brawler Ox Baker. It’s only a small scene, but The Ox makes a memorable impact, with lots of grunting and snarling and even more facial hair.

26: Randy Savage – Spider-Man

Despite being probably the second biggest WWF star of the era, Macho Man Randy Savage never got the push into films that Hulk Hogan did. His only notable cinematic moment wouldn’t come until 2002 when he appeared in Sam Rami’s first Spider-Man film. Savage played a small but important part in the Spidey mythos: the wrestler who a young Peter Parker beats but fails to receive the prize money for. Originally named Crusher Hogan, Savage creates a new character called ‘Bonesaw’ who is basically just Randy Savage obsessed with saws.

An interesting post-script to this was when Savage recorded his debut rap album (yes, Savage did record a hip-hop record), and had a song calling out Hulk Hogan, mocking his terrible straight to video movies and boasting that he “got [him]self a feature role in Spider-Man,” despite the fact he’s only in the film for about five minutes.