Early Bird Cameo / Pro Wrestling

• Hiromitsu Kanehara was in a blink and miss it role as a "young boy" for New Japan Pro-Wrestling, and even got to train with Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Osamu Nishimura, but he left for the Universal Wrestling Federation and wouldn't be seen in New Japan again until UWF-i invaded during 1995.
• Chris Dolman accompanied Willem Ruska during his match against Antonio Inoki in New Japan Pro Wrestling but when he became a pro wrestler he opted to go to the Universal Wrestling Federation, then become a shoot fighter/mixed martial artists before appearing for New Japan again in 1995 for a RINGS offer match where he lost to Akira Maeda.
• Long before officially joining WWF as Mankind, Mick Foley appeared in a few jobber matches as Jack Foley (his father's name) as WWF wouldn't let him use Cactus Jack.
  • In one jobber appearance, Foley almost used his real name, being credited as "Nick Faley."
  • Mick's first appearance on WWF TV was as a member of the audience watching the Don Muraco vs. Jimmy Snuka cage match from Madison Square Garden in 1983.
• Foley's fellow Dominic DeNucci protege Shane Douglas also did jobs around the same time, using his real name, Troy Martin.
• A few guys that became stars in WWE made their first appearances on WCW syndicated shows:
  • WCW somehow saw no value in a guy named Damon Striker. You probably (think you) know him as Edge.^note Now you know him by his real name of Adam Copeland, since he lost the rights to the name Edge when he left WWE
  • Glenn Jacobs would go through several gimmicks, including a brief stint as Bruiser Mastino, before finally finding one that stuck in Kane.
  • WCW liked Owen Hart so much they not only let him use his real name, but gave him a perfect 5-0 win/loss record while he was negotiating a contract. He eventually elected to go with the WWF, where he'd remain until his death in 1999. Pay your respects by watching him squash some random job guy.
• Several luchadors appeared on WWF TV in 1997 as part of a cross promotion with AAA, including Mascarita Sagrada, who later appeared as part of WWE's short-lived midget wrestling division in 2005.
• CM Punk appears as one of the gangsters in John Cena's entrance at WrestleMania 22. He would later go on to allude to that during a feud with Cena a few years later.
• Speaking of Cena, he made a brief appearance in 2000...in a WCW production. A blond-haired, 22-year-old Cena was one of several wrestlers working out in a gym scene in Ready to Rumble. Yes, that David Arquette film WCW was promoting when they made him their World Champion.
• Caprice Coleman first showed up working against Ring of Honor in 2004, representing NWA Wildside with Delirious and Rainman while Matt Sydal was representing IWA Mid-South (Jimmy Jacobs won for ROH). Matt Sydal and Delirious were somewhat regular to ROH at that point but Coleman would not get into a long term ROH deal for years.
• Nigel McGuinness's first appearance in TNA was one off as part of a battle royal in 2004 on the 106th pay per view. The next year he would be defeated by Shark Boy on the Genesis pre show, still four years before he found a regular role as Desmond Wolfe.
• Before he got his "Irish" gimmick in 2006, Dave Finlay was the Divas' trainer and made occasional appearances at WWE events as a nameless official. Watch the part of the 2005 Royal Rumble in which Shawn Michaels eliminates Kurt Angle in less than a minute. Angle retaliates by reentering the ring, eliminating Michaels in turn, and then violently whaling on him. Several referees and other enforcer characters run out to subdue Angle, and one of them is Finlay. Of course back in WCW, he was always known as fighting-Irishman Fit Finlay and was given the backstage role when WCW was acquired by WWF/WWE.
• Tommaso Ciampa
  • He first appeared at ROH Reclaims Boston in a multiman dark match going by "Thomas" in 2006 and wouldn't be seen again until five years later with a very different (if familiar) attitude (basically as a Captain Ersatz of Erik Stevens).
  • Prior to his official WWE debut in 2016, he appeared eleven years earlier as Muhammad Hassan's lawyer under his real name.
• In an interview with Beth Phoenix for IGN, a few FCW divas can be seen wrestling in the background. One of them was Alicia Fox.
• Both Victoria and Lita were already established wrestlers but first appeared as Godfather's Hos in the WWF before actively wrestling for it.
• Scotty Too Hotty started in the WWF in 1991, though did not get used in any storylines until the late 90s.
• Both of the Hardy Boyz wrestled regularly on WWE TV during the 90s as short-haired teenage jobbers, most infamously during the one off "Jinx Brothers" match, before getting properly called up in 1999.
• Another high-school aged teen, Louis Mucciolo, did jobs for WWF in the late '80s under his more familiar ring name Louie Spicolli. He would make his formal main roster debut in the mid-'90s as Bodydonnas protege Rad Radford, a lower-carder with a "grunge rocker" gimmick.
• Stephanie McMahon made her first appearance on WWF TV when she was only a child. She was one of the kids in the "Roddy Piper's Trick Or Treat" sketch on Saturday Night's Main Event in 1985. She also made appearances in the late 80s and early 90s modelling t-shirts and baseball caps in the WWF merchandise catalogues.
  • Around this same time her brother had a couple of appearances as the outside referee during Royal Rumble and Survivor Series matches, though he was never named on camera.
• Ted DiBiase wrestled in the WWF for two years in the 1970's, before returning as "The Million Dollar Man".
  • Some of his promos featured future stars as well. In one, he offered Linda McMahon $100 to get down on all fours and bark like a dog, then decided she didn't deserve the money.
  • He also paid a teenager to kiss his foot after a match. That teenager grew up to become ECW and WWE star Rob Van Dam.
• Daichi Hashimoto's "debut" for Pro Wrestling ZERO1 wasn't actually a wrestling match but a kickboxing exhibition in 2011 with Satoshi Kobayashi.
• Uhaa Nation's first run in Dragon Gate with the Blood Warriors Power Stable was Cut Short due to an injury and is pretty much forgotten in comparison to his later roles in The Monster Express, Mad Blankey and one of the top attractions for DG USA.
• Damien Sandow was a paper bag distributor for future tag partner Cody Rhodes. Also the masked Easter Bunny in the APA's Barroom Brawl at the 2003 PPV Vengeance. He also had a short run in the WWE tag team division as Idol Stevens.
• Jacqueline wrestled a couple of matches on Heat against indie wrestler Starla Saxton in 1998. Two years later, Saxton would join the WWE roster officially as Molly Holly. She also wrestled Malia Hosaka in WCW as Starla Saxton, before joining the company as Miss Madness.
  • Then known as Miss Texas in the USWA, Jackie herself appeared in one of the vignettes WWE aired back in late 1993 to promote Jeff Jarrett's debut.
• In 1985-86, a 25-year-old Dean Malenko worked for the WWF as a referee. This was 15 years before he would officially debut as part of the Radicalz, possibly the longest time between cameo and appearance on this list. He also showed up in WCW before he officially debuted, as he and his brother Joe took part in the NWA tag team Tournament against Ricky Steamboat and Nikita Koloff at Clash of the Champions XIX in 1992.
• In a similar example to the Dean Malenko one above, Teddy Long was a referee for years in WWE before becoming a proper onscreen personality, going from manager to Smackdown General Manager. He did the same thing in WCW, starting off as a referee and then becoming a manager.
• Ares was in Chikara's 2003 Tag World Grand Prix, had a match in 2005 against Quackenbush, and then wasn't seen again, going back to Europe until Die Bruderschaft des Kreuzes made its presence known by basically beating down every Chikara wrestler they could find, excepting those who turned out to be members, as the brainwashed Delirious and willing servants Sara Del Rey and Daizee Haze. Lampshaded by UltraMantis Black who admitted he didn't even know who Ares was.
• Melina Perez in her pre-MNM days made two appearances on Raw in late 2004, first in a lingerie strip tease segment and then a limbo segment, about four months before she properly debuted on television. She was also one of the few who didn't make the cut in season 3 of Tough Enough.
• Hayato Fujita had a short run in Michinoku Pro Wrestling during 2005 as a face and feuded with Los Salseros Japoneses for one night before being sent to Toryumon Mexico to gain experience. Fujita became better known as a Hero Killer who destroyed Yoshitsune and The Great Sasuke, as well as an important member of Bad Boy.
• Yujiro Takahashi and Tetsuya Naito, the Tag Team better known as No Limit, defeated Genba Hirayanagi and Kotaro Suzuki of NOAH's DISOBEY stable in a dark match at Ring of Honor The Tokyo Summit. Naito wouldn't become relevant to ROH until the second War Of The Worlds seven years later, while Takahashi would have to wait eight years at ''Honor Rising Japan" for a non dark match.
• Diamond Dallas Page was driving Rhythm and Blues' pink Cadillac at WrestleMania VI in 1990, 11 years before he signed with the company^note He was driving it because he owned it, he let the WWF use it for free so long as he got to appear on camera at WrestleMania. He was hoping to get a job out of it (having just left the AWA, which at that point had nine toes in the grave) but ended up going to WCW to manage The Diamond Studd, Vinnie Vegas, and Scotty Flamingo instead. Edge was also in attendance at the same event, which took place in his home town of Toronto.
• Before debuting his Foreign Wrestling Heel gimmick in 2003, French-Canadian wrestler Sylvan Grenier was supposedly a WWE referee tasked with mediating the rematch between Hulk Hogan and The Rock at that year's No Way Out (which, appropriately enough, was being held in Grenier's hometown of Montreal, Quebec, Canada). This is an unusual example in that Grenier was referred to by name by the commentary team, and his behavior in the course of the match was actually his Start of Darkness and even carried over to WrestleMania XIX the following month!
• Drew Gulak made infrequent appearances for Chikara in the mid-'00s before a semi notable appearance in 2008 for King Of Trios, but would not amount to much until returning for King of Trios 2014 with "The Gentlemen's Club". He still wouldn't regularly appear until 2015, and would join WWE a few years later.
• The druids who accompanied UltraMantis Black for his match against Hallowicked at Through Savage Progress Cuts the Jungle Line later gained individual, and largely unrelated to Black identities as Obariyon and Kodama.
• Celtic Championship Wrestling:
  • Kazza G first appeared as a backstage interviewer before getting integrated onto the roster.
  • Ricky Combat can be glimpsed as a runner at several early shows, and features as a bodyguard in front of Lee Cahalane's office at one point.
  • Bedlam Billy was first a commentator and then a ring announcer.
• In Progress Wrestling, a lot of ENDVR talent appear as company security on the chapter shows before having matches. Some examples are Ali Armstrong, Damon Moser and Shen Woo.
• Flex Rumblecrunch was first spotted at the December 2012 Chikara event Under The Hood accompanying The Devastation Corporation during their entrance, then leaving. He wouldn't be seen or heard from again until May 18th, 2013, during the Tag World Grand Prix, when he turned up and to attack The Colony with Max Smashmaster and Blaster McMassive.
• Before being formally introduced as the Wyatt Family's "black sheep," Braun Strowman was one of Adam Rose's unnamed Rosebuds. Becky Lynch, Elias, and Simon Gotch were also Rosebuds.
• D'Lo Brown wrestled as jobber AC Conner, a slightly modified version of his real name, shortly before debuting as part of The Nation of Domination.
• Before breaking out as one-third of The Shield, Dean Ambrose was an indie darling who wrestled under the name Jon Moxley. He made a few jobber appearances on WWE's C-show Velocity in 2006 using that ring name, including one where his long hair is dyed hot pink◊. He had also played a druid for The Undertaker one time.
• Dalton Castle made several one off appearances in the various "Wrestling Is" promotions related to Chikara before finding an extended role in Chikara itself as the ship captain Ashley Remington.
• 2004's $1,000,000 WWE Tough Enough produced Mike "The Miz" Mizanin, future Spirit Squad member Nick "Mitch" Mitchell, and some guy who nearly injured Kurt Angle for real and got cut shortly after winning the competition. One of the eight finalists was a guy named Ryan Reeves, who did well, but was quickly forgotten as he drifted around in OVW and FCW after Tough Enough was done. Little more than five years later, he was back as a NXT Season 1 finalist named Skip Sheffield and joined The Nexus once the season was over. After an injury took him off TV, he dropped the cowboy gimmick and fake Texan accent and was repackaged as the guy who wants people to feed him more.
• Angelina Love was a TNA mainstay for most of the mid-2000s, but she had a couple appearances under her earlier gimmick Angel Williams in the early 2000s.
• Despite being the first eliminated from Tough Enough's fifth season in 2010, as well as the girl who said Melina vs Alicia Fox was her favorite wrestling match of all time^note which was part of the reason why she was eliminated in the first place, Ariane Andrew was the only member of that season's class to make it to the main roster, debuting in 2012 as Funkadactyls member Cameron.
• Charlotte Flair made her first appearance in the wrestling world accompanying her father in a 1999 WCW Monday Nitro (the same night where Mick Foley won his very first WWE Title reign... which means she was actually in the building for the Fingerpoke Of Doom). She also made two one-off appearances on WWE Raw^SpecificallyIn January 2006 as an audience member watching her father challenge Edge for the WWE Championship in a TLC match, then accompanying him along with the rest of their family in Ric's retirement ceremony the night after WrestleMania 24 before officially joining WWE years later. While she was still wrestling in NXT, she made an appearance in Triple H’s WrestleMania XXX entrance alongside fellow developmental stars Sasha Banks and Alexa Bliss.
  • Actually her very first appearance was in a pre-tape during Starrcade 93 (where Ric is saying goodbye to the family as he's leaving for his match with Big Van Vader) when she was all of 7 years old, the Nitro appearance mentioned above was the first time she appeared on camera live in the arena.
• Zack Ryder was in the audience at WrestleMania X and was one of the kids Razor Ramon posed with after winning the Intercontinental Title. He also once jobbed to Matt Morgan a few years before he made his proper debut.
• Rory Gulak first wrestled for Chikara at National Pro Wrestling Day '13, then did not show up again until the Johnny Kidd Invitational in 2017. More than that, he had been appearing as a fan at CZW events since he was a child, dressing as "Sick" Nick Mondo, which caused him to wrestle as "Rory Mondo" in CZW, hoping to emulate Mondo's career(apparently forgetting how that ended).
• Young Lion sent into exile, Hiromu Takahashi, would make a brief return to New Japan during the 2016 Fantasticamania, still using La Ola Amarilla Kamaitachi gimmick even though he lost his mask, defeating the man who unmasked him, Dragon Lee, for the CMLL World Lightweight Title belt. His official return to New Japan wouldn't be until next year, with his more familiar name, as "The Ticking Time Bomb" of Los Ingobernables de Japon.
• The man who would become CHIKARA wrestler Gran Akuma was in the audience for The Second Show on May 31, 2002, meaning his face appeared on camera three years before he lost his mask to Shane Storm at Running in the Red on November 13, 2005.
• Before Johnny Gargano made his official WWE debut in 2016, he first appeared as a Jobber nine years earlier billed as the champion of a Lichtenstein.
• Bayley was visible as a ringside audience member (specifically during a Eugene segment) during a 2004 episode of WWE Raw.
• A young MJF can be seen in one of the episodes of The Rosie O'Donnell Show, in his cocky and arrogant self despite being five years old at the time. He also made brief appearances in WWE; the first one being his audition for Tough Enough 2015, and the second one as a security guard in NXT, who got pushed aside by the then NXT champion Samoa Joe. He even mocked that in a segment in AEW, pushing one of the security guards escorting him.