Going Ringside Ep. 6: Pro wrestling and politics

The overlap between the professional wrestling world and the world of politics has been considerable in recent years. Perhaps a lot more closely aligned then you realize.

Two areas show the overwhelming merging of the two bloodsports: politics and wrestling.

One involves how the state of Florida responded to the pandemic with respect to professional wrestling. The state deemed pro wrestling an “essential business” in 2020. That may make a little more sense when you think about one billionaire (Vince McMahon) with close ties to the Trump White House and another billionaire (Shad Khan) who owns one of Florida’s three NFL teams and running a wrestling promotion with his son in Jacksonville.

In fact, Governor Ron Desantis recently called people who were displaying anti-semitic messages all over Jacksonville “Jabronis”… a wrestling term started by the Iron Sheik and made famous by Dwayne Johnson “The Rock”.

The other overlap was just mentioned. That’s the long personal ties between former President Donald Trump and Vince and Linda McMahon who co-owned the WWF/WWE for decades. Not only did Linda McMahon serve in Trump’s cabinet, not only did she become one of his biggest donors, but several WrestleMania shows were held at Trump properties.

It all started in Minnesota

Pro wrestling’s venture into politics began when Jesse Ventura “shocked the world” by being elected Governor in 1998.

Jesse Ventura was a good wrestler in the 1970′s and early 1980′s but his career was cut short by injury. So Vince McMahon and the WWF made him their primary color commentator. Ventura called matches alongside either McMahon or Gorilla Monsoon, the lead play-by-play guys in the company. Ventura became very adept at adversarial conversation on camera during those years. Monsoon and McMahon were the “babyface” announcers meaning they cheered on the good guys. By contrast Ventura played the “heel”, meaning he cheered on the bad guys. He eventually took his talents to competing WCW in the early 90′s. Those years gave him a chance to hone something politicians have to be very good at – adversarial speaking or debating.

But wrestling wasn’t Ventura’s only industry before he entered the world of politics. He went into Hollywood and got into movies. Numerous other wrestlers like Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper had gone into acting but Ventura was the only real one to have roles in A-list movies like Predator starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Demolition Man starring Sylvester Stallone. Ventura’s roles were not prominent but enough to where people recognized him for ventures outside of wrestling.

Ventura’s political career started when he was elected Mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota in 1990.

After serving a term he “shocked the world” as he famously said by running for Governor as a third party and defeating two strong Democratic and Republican competitors.

The wrestling world was quick to hop on the political bandwagon and had Ventura referee a SummerSlam match between “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Triple H. This was when wrestling was at its peak of mainstream popularity.

Other wrestlers catch the political bug

Following Ventura’s venture into politics numerous other wrestlers waded into the world. Here are just some:

Kane (Glenn Jacobs) is the current Mayor of Knox County, TNRick Steiner was elected to the Cherokee County, GA School BoardMatt Morgan is current Mayor of Longwood, FLBob Backlund ran for Congress in Connecticut and lostJerry Lawler ran for Mayor of Memphis, TN and lostRhyno (Terrance Gerin) ran for Congress in Michigan, won the primary but lost the generalRic Flair campaigned for Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee in 2008Booker T publicly considered a run for Houston, TX Mayor but ended up not runningNikolai Volkoff ran for state delegate in Maryland but lost

MORE EPISODES: Going Ringside with The Local Station

Linda McMahon enters politics

Linda McMahon entered politics in 2010 running for U.S. Senate in her home state of Connecticut. She had left her position at WWE by this point and had spent time on the Connecticut State Board of Education.

McMahon made headlines for spending millions of dollars on the election and did draw criticism that she may have been trying to “buy” the election.

One thing that was hard to find online during this time was any video on sharing sites like YouTube or Daily Motion that showed some of the salacious wrestling angles she had been involved in with her husband, her children and Trish Stratus. Vince McMahon and Stratus had a famous and somewhat adult-oriented wrestling angle that they were having an affair. There was even a scene where Linda McMahon was acting like she was catatonic in a wheelchair while Vince kissed Stratus in front of her. Surprisingly controversial wrestling angles like that didn’t seem to play too much of a role in the Senate campaign.

Despite all the millions the McMahons sunk into the race, she eventually lost. But she made another go at it in 2012 when the state’s other Senate seat opened up. Once again, she was unsuccessful and lost her second bid for a Connecticut Senate Seat.

Donald Trump is elected President

Following the election of Donald Trump he named a cabinet and that’s when Linda McMahon re-entered the political world. The Trumps and McMahons had been very close for decades. WrestleManias IV and V were both at Trump Plaza. Then in 2007 he appeared at WrestleMania in the “Battle of the Billionaires” which was a “hair vs. hair” match with Vince McMahon. Meaning the loser would have their heads shaved. Both men chose a wrestler to represent them. Trump chose Bobby Lashley and McMahon chose the Umaga. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin was the guest referee. Lashley was victorious and there was even a portion of the match where Trump jumped McMahon and continually punched the WWE Owner while he was on the floor. McMahon subsequently had his head shaved.

So the link between them was long-term and that likely contributed to Linda McMahon being named to his cabinet as head of the Small Business Administration. She was easily sworn in by the Senate and compared to many of Trump’s other appointments had little scrutiny or criticism. In fact, in one of her hearings, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey – a regular critic of then-President Trump – started gushing about how he knew McMahon’s son-in-law Triple H who was in attendance.

McMahon did not serve the entire Trump term. Instead, she left early to chair a pro-Trump Super PAC. The McMahons donated a lot to Trump’s failed reelection bid in 2020. It’s unclear how much they will be involved in the current effort for the 2024 race.

Ed Dean hosts a conservative political talk show based in Jacksonville and is knowledgeable on both Republican politics and pro wrestling. “It’s really based on loyalty,” Dean said. “They’ve done a lot of fundraising together. They’ve done a lot of business together. And remember Trump’s Taj Mahal is where they had some of these WrestleManias. For example, some of the big wrestling promos were at Trump areas, Trump locations.”

Pro wrestling deemed “essential service”

In 2020 at the start of the pandemic the state of Florida, like many other states were wrestling (pun intended) with what businesses needed to shut down. This was very early in the pandemic when there were a lot of unknowns on its impact.

In the Spring and Summer of 2020 there were shutdowns of multiple types of businesses but not pro wrestling. Governor Ron Desantis declared the business as “essential”. This set off numerous criticisms of Florida because many people didn’t think pro wrestling should have gotten that designation.

Consider what was happening in two major cities in Florida at that time. First, WWE had a major footprint in Orlando. The McMahons had their long established ties to then-President Trump. However, they still didn’t allow live audiences in their Orlando venue. There were safety protocols and most of their shows had an enormous Zoom audience on hundreds of monitors watching from home. Most of the news coverage of this order focused on WWE’s presence.

One thing that was really overlooked during this time was pro wrestling’s other major company based in Jacksonville. All Elite Wrestling (AEW) started in 2019 by the Khan family who also own the Jacksonville Jaguars were hosting wrestling events live weekly at Daily’s Place in Jacksonville. In fact, they went a step beyond WWE in Orlando and were really the first sporting-type event to perform in front of live audiences possibly in the nation. The AEW events, even though they were run nationally on TNT, seemed to go under the radar because AEW does not have the brand awareness in the general public like WWE does. In fact, there was considerable coverage of a UFC event with a crowd nearby in Jacksonville.

A lot of the media coverage at the time portrayed that as the first time there would be a large sporting event with an audience. But that was truly not the case. Just across the parking lot at Daily’s Place, AEW had been hosting audiences for several months. This was likely due, once again, to news media simply not being aware of AEW’s existence and it received little mainstream coverage.

DeSantis ‘outs’ himself as a wrestling fan?

There’s one other thing worth noting with respect to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Late in 2022 there was a controversial story in Jacksonville where a group was projecting multiple displays of anti-semitic messages on buildings and at events around Jacksonville. This drew widespread criticism from all across the political spectrum.

When asked about it the Governor responded: “I’m concerned when people in the media take some jabroni that nobody cares about and will try to elevate them and make them some type of celebrity,” said DeSantis.

The use of the term “jabroni” was interesting because that’s a wrestling pejorative. It was made famous in the late 1990′s by “The Rock” Dwayne Johnson and originally coined by the Iron Sheik.

Could Dwayne Johnson run for President?

This episode of “Going Ringside With The Local Station” is only the first part in a series of the overlap between pro wrestling and politics. We plan on doing another episode solely focusing on whether Dwayne Johnson could run for President someday.

Johnson running for President in the future is currently the premise of his sitcom “Young Rock” that airs right now on NBC.

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