WrestleMania wouldn’t be complete without an appearance from a celebrity, and this year’s show features a major one. Grammy-winning musician Bad Bunny is set to team up with WWE wrestler Damian Priest in a tag-team match against The Miz and John Morrison on the first night (Saturday) of the two-night event.
Bunny’s involvement in WWE’s biggest spectacle of the year has attracted a whole new audience to wrestling. So the people who don’t usually follow wrestling may tune in to Saturday’s show, hoping to see the “I Like It” singer, might have questions about exactly what he’s doing there. Let’s dive into it.
In January, Bunny released a video for his song “Booker T” that featured, naturally, WWE Hall of Famer Booker T. Later that month he and Booker T performed the song at the Royal Rumble. It was there that his WrestleMania story line began.
As The Miz made his entrance into the Royal Rumble match, he used the Money in the Bank briefcase to smash Bunny’s DJ set, which had been left on the stage after his performance. Bunny confronted The Miz and his partner John Morrison, allowing Priest to eliminate both men. Bunny then hit them with a splash from the top rope onto the floor.
That moment led to a months-long story line in which Bunny and Priest butted heads with Miz and Morrison, but Bunny’s WWE involvement has been deeper than that. He also won the 24/7 championship during a backstage segment and proceeded to bring the belt to Saturday Night Live when he was the musical guest.
Bunny’s presence has also been a major boost to Priest. The current program with Miz and Morrison is Priest’s first feud as a member of the WWE main roster. He made the move up from NXT at the Royal Rumble and being paired with a star on the level of Bunny is a signal that WWE management believes in Priest.
The duo has had great chemistry together. Both men were raised in Puerto Rico and switch seamlessly between English and Spanish in their backstage segments. Their high-profile spot on the WrestleMania card brings some welcome diversity to the show, especially considering WWE’s spotty track record with Latinx performers.
The story line itself has been fairly straightforward, built around the idea that The Miz doesn’t respect Bunny. Miz and Morrison are the bad guys here, and they’ve done plenty to antagonize Bunny and Priest, including vandalizing Bunny’s Bugatti and releasing a music video poking fun at their opponents.
The Miz challenged Bunny to a match at WrestleMania on the March 22 episode of Raw, which Bunny accepted after smashing a guitar on Miz’s back.
The match was changed to a tag-team bout on this week’s Raw.
Bunny is a lifelong wrestling fan, so this is surely a dream come true for him. If the splash at the Rumble is any indication, he isn’t afraid to take risks, so we’ll see how he pushes the envelope on the big stage. Priest is confident that fans will be impressed by what they see from Bunny.
“Every week, multiple days a week, we’re in the ring together,” Priest told WFLA this week. “I’ll tell you what, come WrestleMania, he’s going to surprise some people, he’s taking it seriously. The one thing he’s been adamant about is making sure he got everybody’s respect; he earned everybody’s respect.”
