Over the years, wrestling has had many bed fellows. Steve Cook brings us some NASCAR crossover, just in time for the Daytona 500!

The Daytona 500 is taking place this Sunday! Once upon a time, my NASCAR fandom rivaled my love for pro wrestling. Late-90s Steve Cook was big into all things NASCAR and watched as much of every race as he could. Nowadays, I’m lucky if I remember there’s a race going on.

There’s certainly been some crossover with NASCAR and the world of wrestling over the years. Now is as good a time as any to look at the Top 5 Wrestling Crossovers With NASCAR.

5. Jeff Hammond: TNA Analyst

You may remember that TNA iMPACT!’s first home was on FOX Sports Net on Friday afternoons. They tried to give it that FOX Sports feel with a bar at the top of the screen stating the match & time left in the ten minute time limit most of their matches had. They also brought in one of Fox’s top sports announcers. A staple of FOX’s NASCAR coverage since it’d started in 2001, and I’m pretty sure he’s still involved in some capacity today.

Jeff “Hollywood” Hammond, wrestling ring expert.

TNA loved their NASCAR connections, as we’ll also see with #4. Hammond even wrestled a match, which went about as well as you would expect. The less said the better…

4. Hermie Sadler: Interviewer, Wrestler & Promoter

Hermie is mostly known to NASCAR fans as the older brother of Elliott Sadler. He does some announcing work now as well, but I must admit to having seen him more in pro wrestling than in NASCAR. He was involved in the very early days of TNA, feuding with Ron “The Truth” Killings & opening up his own promotion that pretty much served as a place for TNA to book talent. You’d also see some pretty random people like Maven, and Amber O’Neal wrestling against Earl Hebner for reasons. Also, the announcers were the most Southern-sounding people to ever call wrestling, and that covers some ground.

He also hosted an interview segment on TNA’s website, which I included here because it’s been way too long since I mentioned Traci Brooks in a column.

3. Kyle Busch & Joey Logano guest host Raw

Remember the Guest Host Era of Raw? I know, I’m also trying to forget. With few exceptions. every celebrity brought in to host Raw struggled tremendously in an unfamiliar role in front of crowds that didn’t care about them. Busch & Logano were no exception to the rule.

OK, Logano tried. He’s not the most charismatic guy in the world, but he at least got through his lines & kind of sounded like a person. Busch, on the other hand, was a disaster doing a half-assed heel turn & booking Jericho against “Kofi Johnson”. So why do I have them at number three? Because just a year after this they were throwing down on pit road in Las Vegas. Logano left Joe Gibbs Racing for Penske Racing, and he & Kyle didn’t need to act like they liked each other anymore.

Talk about guys getting bitten by the wrestling bug!

2. Thurman “Sparky” Plugg / Bob “Spark Plug” Holly

Being a WWF Superstar didn’t pay very well during the mid-1990s. The bottom had fallen out of the business after the steroid trial & Hulk Hogan’s departure, so many of WWF’s wrestlers needed day jobs in order to pay the bills. There were plumbers, garbage men, dentists, and yes, race car drivers.

The gimmick was based off of Plugg’s real life endeavors, as he was a regular participant in some local racing in his then-hometown of Mobile, Alabama. He even got the WWF to sponsor a car for him in the All Pro Series for a hot minute. After Vince McMahon & Jerry Lawler ran out of puns involving Sparky Plugg, he reclaimed his indy name of Bob Holly, added “Spark Plug” as a nickname and found some success here & there. A brief Tag Team Championship run with 1-2-3 Kid, some IC title matches against Jeff Jarrett, a lot of inactivity.

Holly kept on keeping on though, and eventually got his chance to be hardcore. His WWE career definitely had its ups & downs, but not many wrestlers can say they worked there for fifteen consecutive years.

Honorable Mention: John Cena: 2016 Daytona 500 Grand Marshal

The Great American Race has a Grand Marshal every year. We typically don’t remember them unless they do something silly. Cena didn’t do much of note, other than get slapped by FOX’s Jamie Little’s pony tail on pit road.

Now we know why John Cena wears bright colors all the time. She literally couldn’t see him.

1. WCW/NWO Motorsports

We all remember the WCW vs. NWO feud. It went on for ages and involved so many people that it was tough to keep track of it all. One part you might have missed took place on the tracks of NASCAR. There was certainly an overlap between NASCAR fans & WCW fans, and Ted Turner was part of that overlap. Even before Turner bought the company, Kyle Petty was one of the judges for the Ric Flair vs. Dusty Rhodes match at Starrcade ’84 to draw in the NASCAR fan demographic. WCW dipped their foot into the NASCAR water when they co-sponsored Billy Standridge for a couple of races in 1994 alongside Duralube.

WCW got their own Busch Grand National Series car in 1996, and Steve Grissom won the Goody’s Headache Powder 300 at Daytona to open the season. Greg Sacks won the Hunninbird Fishfinder 500K at Talladega later in the season. It was all downhill for WCW Motorsports from there, as I remember countless segments on Nitro recapping the WCW car getting off to a good start but eventually having a failed engine or wrecking out of the race.

The New World Order wanted to take over the world of wrestling & drive WCW out of business. Naturally, this would include defeating WCW in the world of NASCAR, so they recruited one of the sport’s top names, Kyle Petty, to drive their car in the BGN Series.

As you can tell from the video, it didn’t go too well. WCW sponsorship had shifted to Jason Keller’s Slim Jim car so they could have a Slim Jim Halloween Havoc car in that particular race, and they at least managed a top ten finish. The NWO’s attempt to conquer WCW on the track came up short, but they at least managed to co-sponsor a car with WCW later on.

WCW’s foray into NASCAR wasn’t exactly successful, but it was at least enough to put them ahead of Bob Holly in a column almost two decades after they went out of business. That’s got to count for something, right? The connection between WCW & NASCAR just felt right. WWE’s tried over the years, but it’s just not a perfect marriage.

No matter how hard each company tries, NASCAR will always be Southern, & WWE will always be Northern.