4. David Arquette Wins WCW World Heavyweight Championship - WCW Thunder 25/4/00
Wrestling has always sought to include and feature mainstream celebrities to bring in casual fans and add legitimacy to the product. Jerry Lawler feuded with Andy Kaufman in Memphis way back in 1982, and the big draw on the original WrestleMania was the crossover between professional wrestling and pop culture stars like Mr. T, Cyndi Lauper and Liberace. Its a tactic WCW used as well, with many of their celebrity guests also getting in the ring. WCW famously put Jay Leno in a main event match of a pay-per-view and Dennis Rodman fell asleep during his tag match at Bash at the Beach 1998. No celebrity involvement was more of a shock than that of David Arquette, who was brought into WCW to promote the wrestling comedy film Ready To Rumble and somehow ended up winning the World Heavyweight Championship. It all went down on an episode of WCW Thunder, in a tag match between Arquette & Diamond Dallas Page v Eric Bischoff and Jeff Jarrett, where whoever won the match would win the title. Arquette pinned Bischoff and ended up winning his partners championship. He would hold the title for two weeks before revealing it was all a ruse to get the belt onto Jarrett. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3g37-9nu_g As bad as this was, Arquette was outspoken about not wanting to go through with it, knowing how poorly it would be received. When it was all said and done, Arquette donated all the money he made from his WCW appearances to the families of Owen Hart, Brian Pillman, Brian Hildebrand and Darren Drozdov.
