19 WWE Extras Who Became World Champion

19. Claudio Castagnoli

The first of many future world champs to pop up on WWE programming acting like a person qualified to protect one of the product's stars, Claudio Castagnoli would actually first arrive in the land of sports entertainment back in 2006.

At that point, the human horse was still doing his thing over in Ring of Honor and ripping up the independent scene. But he understandably jumped at the chance to appear on the WWE flagship, Monday Night Raw, on August 28th of that year.

And it was on that night when the eventual ROH World Champion strutted into frame alongside none other than EC3, with those two future WWE talents pretending to be cops backing up Shane McMahon as he confronted a D-Generation X who had been terrorising his father.

Thankfully, most people remember this cringey exchange more for the Blackpool Combat Club man's sneaky early cameo rather than the string of inevitably dumb d*ck jokes spewed by Triple H and Shawn Michaels or the awkward promoting of Vince McMahon's DVD. 

Put simply, the segment hasn't aged all that well.