Known primarily for her presenting career, Maria Menounos has a long and storied history with the WWE.
She first appeared on Raw in 2009, as part of the poorly-remembered “Guest Host” era of Monday Night Raw.
This was a time period where each week, a different celebrity (or celebrities) would act as the “host” and General Manager, making matches and promoting their latest projects.
While there were some decent hosts (Hugh Jackman, Bob Barker and The Muppets spring to mind), most of them were horrible.
This was mainly because they weren’t wrestling fans, barely knew what was going on and didn’t want to get involved.
Mario Menounos was not one of them, and proved that when she stepped into a WWE ring for the first time.
Mario Menounos Wrestled In The WWE
In 2009, Maria Menounos hosted an episode of Monday Night Raw, alongside her colleague Nancy O’Dell.
While this seemed like your run-of-the-mill guest host episode of Raw, it actually turned into the WWE debut of Maria Menounos.
She guest hosted Raw on the October 9th, 2009 episode of Raw. This was a lifelong dream of hers, as she had been a fan of pro-wrestling ever since she was a child.
After a confrontation with some of the WWE Divas, Menounos was thrown in at the deep end and put into a six-women tag team match on the show.
She had very little training, being just a wrestling fan when she was thrown into a match with Kelly Kelly and Gail Kim.
The trio tagged together in a short match, beating three of the top women in WWE – Beth Phoenix, Alicia Fox and Rosa Mendes.
The match lasted all-but two minutes, and Maria Menounos achieved her dream of wrestling in the WWE.
Her performance was good for an untrained wrestler, pulling off some basic moves and putting on a decent try for her first go in the ring.
This was her WWE debut, and the first of four matches. Two years later, Maria Menounos teamed with Alicia Fox, Eve Torres and Kelly Kelly at WWE’s Tribute to the Troops, beating Beth Phoenix, Natalya & The Bella Twins (Brie Bella & Nikki Bella) in a short bout.
She went on to wrestle again at WrestleMania 27, again teaming with Kelly Kelly against Beth Phoenix and Eve Torres.
She won this match, as well as Maria Menounos last match in the WWE. This took place at the Summerslam Axxess event, where they beat Brie Bella and Eva Marie.
This was the end of Maria Menounos wrestling career in the WWE. She retired from wrestling after this match, undefeated in the ring with four wins and zero losses.
She continued to appear on various WWE shows, including at the WWE Hall of Fame.
Maria Menounas famously appeared with Dusty Rhodes at the 2015 WWE Hall of Famer, an event she helped host alongside Michael Cole.
She did an impression of Dusty’s famous Hard Times promo, much to the delight of The American Dream, just months before he passed away.