12 Times American Football Crossed Over Into Wrestling

Back in the summer of 1994, Vince McMahon, being in the midst of a steroid trial (and having already fired Jim Ross), needed a commentator to take his place on the King of the Ring broadcast.

For reasons unknown, McMahon reached out to local NFL legend Art Donovan to perform guest commentary for the entire evening. The major problem with this scheme was that Art had apparently never seen or heard of pro wrestling before. Rather than provide any sort of insight into the matches, Donovan pestered his fellow commentators about the wrestlers’ weights, compared the action to American football, and asked about wrestlers’ weights some more. Between asking such probing questions as “How much does this guy weigh?” and “Randy, is this one of the wrestlers?”, Art suggested that Owen Hart and Tatanka play football and that the wrestlers should wear pads.

To his credit, Art consistently praised the toughness of the wrestlers (always relating back to his football days), even if he didn’t know any of their names (or weights). And it’s not like the other announcers had much knowledge of Donovan’s sport; in the opening moments of the broadcast, Gorilla Monsoon introduced the pay-per-view audience to “Art O’Donnell” (which, admittedly, has a nice ring to it).

But his enthusiasm didn’t prevent the in-over-his-head Donovan from putting on the most embarrassing announcing performance in wrestling history, three hours of laugh-out-loud funny commentary that must be heard to believed.