Celebrity Wrestling

Celebrity Wrestling
Presented byKate Thornton
Rowdy Roddy Piper
StarringIan Freeman
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
No. of series1
No. of episodes8
Production
Running time60mins (inc. comms)
Original release
NetworkITV
Release23 April (2005-04-23) –
12 June 2005 (2005-06-12)

Celebrity Wrestling is a British television programme, broadcast on ITV in 2005. It involved two teams of celebrities, competing against each other in wrestling style events. The series was presented by Kate Thornton and Rowdy Roddy Piper. British mixed martial arts fighter Ian Freeman was the show's referee.

The aftershow programme on ITV2, called Celebrity Wrestling: Bring It On was presented by Jack Osbourne and Holly Willoughby. The winning team was The Warriors and the winning wrestlers were Annabel Croft (Solitaire) and Iwan Thomas (The Dragon).

It was received with a feeling of derision by professional wrestling fans, due to the lack of actual wrestling content. The show featured heavily upon games which involved grappling and the real life interactions of team members in training (and usually not the training process itself).

After five weeks the show was moved from its primetime Saturday evening slot to a graveyard Sunday morning slot due to its extremely poor ratings and being comprehensively beaten in audience share by Doctor Who on BBC One.[1]

Teams

Bold indicates that the celebrity won their gender championship

Masked Celebrity

Each week there was a "mystery celebrity" who joined in the wrestling. The celebrities included:

Other participants

  • Model Emma B took part in one episode as a replacement for Victoria Silvstedt using the character name Queen Bee.
  • Radio DJ Toby Anstis was set to appear in the series, but had to pull out when he broke two of his fingers.
  • The UK Pitbulls tag team appeared on the follow-up show with Jack Osbourne, but serious wrestlers declined to appear.

See also

References

  1. ^ Kilkelly, Daniel (14 May 2005). "ITV confirms new 'Celebrity Wrestling' slot". Digital Spy. Retrieved 19 April 2007.