As an entertainment business that attracts people from all walks of life as well as people from different sports careers, it's no surprise that many a Professional Wrestling fan end up getting entangled in the business.
- Count 'em, just count 'em. Mick Foley, Tommy Dreamer and Bubba Ray Dudley watching Jimmy Snuka jump off the top of the cage, Edge being in the crowd to watch Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior battle at WrestleMania VI, Shawn Michaels and his "boyhood dream", every single thing John Cena says these days. It might be easier to count the wrestlers who aren't promoted fanboys.
- Special mention to Edge for winning the tag title with Hogan.
- Rob Naylor was a fairly well known name in the Internet wrestling community for quite a while before getting gigs doing commentary for various indy promotions. At one point, he was namedropped during an episode of Raw by CM Punk and not long afterwards was officially hired by WWE. He even worked as the ring announcer for their developmental promotion Florida Championship Wrestling.
- A.J. Lee went from an anime, video game and pro wrestling fangirl living out of motels with her family as a kid to being a wrestler herself. There's even a video from a WWE produced piece (back in 2001) of Lita at a signing for a just released video of hers and a teenage AJ shows up very visibly emotional at getting to meet who was presumably her idol. Circa 2013-2015, she arguably became the centerpiece of the entire Divas division, having multiple storylines involving her on-screen dating multiple superstars to becoming Raw GM to becoming Divas Champion.
- Current WWE referee Charles Robinson idolized Ric Flair all his life (notably coloring and styling his hair to resemble Flair's), and after several years in the business got to work for WCW in 1997; in 1999 they finally acknowledged this on TV and made him a biased ref in favor of Flair. Many years after they both started working for WWE, Robinson received the honor of refereeing Ric's retirement match at WrestleMania 24.
- Fans of MTV's The Real World were introduced to young Mike "The Miz" Mizanin, who wanted to go into professional wrestling and would cut wrestling promos on the show for the hell of it. As we all know what happened next, young Mizanin got a crack in the WWE, paid his dues, and eventually ascended to becoming WWE Champion, including headlining WrestleMania 27.
- When Scott Garland a.k.a. Scott Taylor/Scotty 2 Hotty was 14 or 15 years old, wrote to the WWF asking what professional wrestling school the WWF recruited their wrestlers from and attempted to call Vince McMahon himself. He would go on to have his first match with the company as a high school junior.
- Occasionally, a fan reaction goes viral, and WWE takes notice of it. The most famous examples are the young girl who was angry at The Miz's WWE championship victory and the African-American who witnessed the Undertaker's WrestleMania streak come to an end.
- This happened in the worst possible way for David Arquette. A longtime wrestling fan, he was thrilled to work with WCW to make and promote the movie Ready to Rumble — and horrified when he learned that, as part of said promotion, he was going to be given the WCW World Heavyweight Championship and headline a pay-per-view despite the minor detail of not being a wrestler. He knew the fans would hate the idea, and him by extension, and only went through with it out of contractual obligation; he ended up donating every cent he made from WCW to the families of injured and deceased wrestlers.
- Before The Moondogs became 16 time USWA tag team champions, Fifi was a fan in the audience. She'd not only get to join the Moondogs as they became more successful but help contribute by beating Miss Texas for the women's title belt in 1992.
- Tommy Dreamer grew up as a fan of Carlos Colon and Abdullah the Butcher during their CSP feud. In 1994 he got to go to Puerto Rico himself for IWA, though it would not be until 2010 that he got to wrestle in the same promotion they did, now called WWC. Eddie Kingston grew up as a fan of Tommy Dreamer.
- Mark Henry grew up as a fan of André the Giant. As a boy he fell over the fan barricade and was picked up and placed on the other side by Andre himself.
- Sumie Sakai was already a Joshi but was a fan of USA pro wrestling. Since she got into the business at a time when there wasn't much work for women in the fifty states, facing Luna Vachon at an IWA Puerto Rico show seemed the closest she'd come but after four years of perseverance she stepped into New England Championship Wrestling and kicked off a feud with Mercedes Martinez.
- Rather than try to take the Buffalo Bills back to the Super Bowl, outside linebacker Monty Brown signed with the New England Patriots in order to get closer to the headquarters of WWE. When that didn't work out he instead debuted for All World Wrestling League in Michigan after training with Dan "The Beast" Severn and Sabu. He'd eventually follow Sabu into WWE's ill-fated revival of ECW.
- Low Ki was not shy about expressing his desire to go to Japan early in his career. Low Ki made it to Pro Wrestling ZERO1 in four years, where he lashed out at the perceived disrespect the Japanese wrestler had for his lack of size. He eventually became a face by default to the crowd though.
- While working for New Japan, Shinsuke Nakamura would admit to growing up being a puroresu Geek. He would win four different IWGP title belts on numerous occasions during his stay in New Japan alone.
- Nikita wasn't a fan of her local product but took to NWA UK and NAWA in Germany anyway, eventually meeting her goal of wrestling in the USA after six years when she debuted for SHIMMER.
- As a rookie pro wrestler, Nikki Matthews took an interest in SHIMMER and eventually got added to the roster as a last minute addition after a year, where she met Portia Perez and formed The Canadian Ninjas, staples of the tag team division. Eventually fireballed her way to the singles title too.
- Though Sweet N Sour Larry Sweeney debuted in 2000, he had shown up long before that as a fan at the International Wrestling Cartel's Super Indy Championship Tournament. He'd go on to win the sixth super indy.
- Simply D'Vyne used to be a fan of WSU before becoming a wrestler. She got to wrestle a match on the second anniversary of WSU's transition to a women's promotion.
- Rory Gulak was first seen at CZW events as a little boy dressed up as "Sick" Nick Mondo. In 2008, he'd debut for the promotion, still patterning himself the same way and calling himself Rory Mondo.
- When Sami Callihan came to the WWN shows such as Full Impact Pro and EVOLVE in 2010 he made it clear that he was sick of the independent circuit and was mainly there to get the attention of a major promotion like Dragon Gate. He eventually mellowed out... a little.
- Michael Elgin may have already been a professional wrestler but he was still a fan boy of Ring of Honor. He not only got to wrestle for the promotion after eight years but eventually went on to become a world champion. He's also a fan of Japanese 'strong style', eventually getting on shore for NJPW after twelve years, in the G1 Climax no less.
- Paige Turner was first seen as a fan at an NWA Southwest show. She'd eventually show up as a competitor in NWA Houston in 2013. She has said that Chyna's workout video inspired her to lose 30 pounds while in high school.
- Chris Jericho revealed in a Highlight Reel segment
that Kevin Owens had been a fan of his since he was 16, and was able to team with Jericho for the better part of a year after coming to the WWE. - The team at WhatCulture Wrestling consists primarily of long time wrestling fans who've had various degrees of involvement in the industry from the journalism side of things, but as of 2016, they've formed their own independent wrestling promotion, WCPW (now Defiant Wrestling), where they act as managers, authority figures, interviewers, commentators, and (occasionally) wrestlers.
- Watch an 80s All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling match featuring the Crush Gals, and note how the audience is filled with screaming schoolgirls generating heat on the same level as Hulk Hogan at the same time. Now, consider the incredible depth of talent found in AJW's roster during the 90s. Surely you can see that this is not a coincidence.
- Ronda Rousey is a huge fan of wrestling who cut her teeth instead at Ultimate Fighting Championship. However, she kept attending events and after a cameo at WrestleMania 31, she finally was hired by the WWE, making her debut at the Royal Rumble 2018.
- Kara "Cherry" Drew said Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth were her favorites.
- Hell, Vince McMahon himself qualifies. He's said that, growing up, his favorite wrestler was Dr. Jerry Graham.
- CHIKARA, full stop. Founder Mike Quackenbush took his Red Baron "Lightning" as an homage to one of his heroes, Jushin Thunder Liger. The December 28, 2011 edition of their YouTube series The Barber Shop asked various CHIKARA personalities who, growing up, their favorite wrestlers were.
- Luke Perry's son Jack was a fan of wrestling and was in the audience of WWE's SummerSlam 2009 with his father at the age of twelve. Jack Perry started wrestling in the independent circuit in 2015. As of 2019, he's joined All Elite Wrestling as Jungle Boy.
- Tony Khan, son of multi-billionaire Shahid Khan, was a lifelong wrestling fan. When The Elite held their massively-successful indie show All-In in 2018, Tony stepped up to offer them his family's financial backing, becoming the co-owner (with his father), president and CEO of All Elite Wrestling. While it was initially believed that he was only providing the money while the booking was being handled by The Elite (who were executive vice-presidents), it turned out that Tony was actually the head booker for the promotion- where he put his years of watching wrestling to good use, making it rapidly grow to become the second biggest promotion in North America as well as WWE's biggest competition since WCW.
- Jim Cornette was a huge fan of wrestling from a young age. He started going to events in and around Louisville at age 14 as a photographer. He'd do all sorts of odd jobs, including timekeeper, ring announcer, PR, and reporting and publishing photos to wrestling magazines. Then at 21, Jerry Jarrett decided to put him on television as an obnoxious and inept manager whose clients kept firing him after one match, and he never looked back.
