How I Met Your Mother's Jason Segel Involved In A Fight At A Pro Wrestling Show

Jason Segel might not be the first Hollywood star who comes to mind for his proximity to professional wrestling — his similarities to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson just about begin and end with his above-average height. But he had wrestling fans talking nevertheless after he briefly became the focal point of a match at a show in Los Angeles County.

On October 30, author Hector Diaz posted a video to X, formerly known as Twitter, of bad boy wrestler Sami Callihan placing his opponent Penta El Zero Miedo in Segel's lap as the "How I Met Your Mother" actor yells, "Don't do it, Callihan!" While Segel is still begging him not to, Callihan kicks Penta in the face. "Didn't expect to spend my Monday night watching Jason Segel and Penta getting superkicked," Diaz wrote. "But here we are." This video soon made the rounds among wrestling fans online.

This all took place at Republic of Lucha, a store and venue dedicated to all things lucha libre in South Pasadena that Penta co-owns with his brother and fellow All Elite Wrestling performer Rey Fenix. The match paired Penta with rising Japanese talent Konosuke Takeshita and Callihan with Shun Skywalker, a masked Japanese wrestler known for making frequent goat-like noises. And from the sound of it, Segel's involvement was not preplanned but a decision Callihan made after spotting the actor in the crowd.

Before attending Republic of Lucha's October 30 wrestling event, Jason Segel was already making headlines for a surprise performance of a song from his "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" character's Dracula puppet musical at a venue in Hollywood called the Hotel Cafe the previous night.

Then, on November 2, Sami Callihan guested on "Busted Open Radio" and shared some behind-the-scenes insight into the "Shrinking" star's involvement in his Republic of Lucha match. At about 16:27 into a video version of the wrestling podcast on YouTube, host Dave LaGreca asks Callihan if he thinks he might collaborate with Segel again in the future. "I think we became best friends," Callihan replies with a smile. "The clip went viral, which is great. As soon as I saw him I was like, you know what? I'm gonna have a viral moment tonight. I planned it exactly that way."

Of course, professional wrestling revolves around presenting staged events as if they're real, so it's entirely possible Callihan cleared this interaction with Segel before the show started and wants to preserve its mystique by merely characterizing it as a spur-of-the-moment decision. In either case, Segel was a good sport and earned plenty of positive attention from wrestling fans as a result.