Why Trump loves wrestling – and why wrestling loves Trump

Loud music, fireworks, larger-than-life showmanship… you’d be forgiven for confusing one of the President-elect’s rallies for WrestleMania

“I consider this to be my greatest honour of all,” Donald Trump said in April 2013, as he was inducted into the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Hall of Fame at Madison Square Garden. The President-elect would presumably now rank twice being voted into the Oval Office as a greater honour than entering wrestling’s celebrated pantheon, yet the remark demonstrated the critical importance of combat sports in his life and work.
The love Trump has for the sport has certainly been reciprocated by devotees of wrestling and bodybuilding who passionately supported his landslide victory over Kamala Harris last week. Those who have studied the links between Trump and professional wrestling testify to the role the sport played in getting him back into the White House. “Everybody likes to attribute The Apprentice for his media exposure but Donald Trump learnt a lot how to interact with the public and how to do so much stuff from wrestling,” says Dr Shannon Bow O’Brien, a presidency scholar at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Donald Trump and the Kayfabe Presidency: Professional Wrestling Rhetoric in the White House [Kayfabe is the wrestling convention of presenting scripted and staged performances as real]. “Wrestling helped him inform how he sees the world,” she says. “He uses wrestlers’ tactics, their tropes and their skills – he never apologises, always forcefully doubles down and he’s never wrong.”
It’s not difficult to see why Trump was drawn to professional wrestling, which is akin to an overblown reality TV musical in a sports stadium setting and where bombastic pronouncements and grand titles are highly valued. In 1988 and 1989, Trump hosted WrestleMania, wrestling’s annual equivalent of the SuperBowl, at the hotel he then owned in Atlantic City. He continued to attend WWE events and feature as part of their narratives, culminating in a bizarre 2007 appearance at what was dubbed Battle of the Billionaires where Trump faced off with WWE CEO and chairman Vince McMahon at WrestleMania 23. The pair battled via proxy fighters with the winner getting to shave the loser’s head. Trump’s wrestler won the bout and McMahon lost his hair. The event became the highest grossing pay-per-view event in wrestling history.
“Donald Trump is a natural heel,” says Dr Bow O’Brien, using the wrestling term for a villain. “He has antagonistic personal qualities to him and in wrestling, which is among the few spheres where the audience is allowed to interact with the performers, he likes the adoration of the crowd. His rallies look a lot like wrestling performances. They always have the music, the fireworks, the whizz bang stuff, people yelling and clapping.”
As Trump prepares for a second term in the White House, his wrestling connections are stronger than ever. McMahon, 79 – whose controversial conduct, flamboyant style and tendency to blur fantasy and reality in the eyes of his critics has frequently drawn comparisons with the President-elect – has severed ties with the WWE while federal authorities investigate allegations of sexual misconduct, assault and trafficking (all of which are denied by McMahon).
Trump appropriated his infamous “You’re fired” catchphrase from the US Apprentice (later used in the UK version by Lord Sugar) from McMahon. While McMahon’s camp has insisted he no longer maintains contact with Trump, his wife, Linda, headed the Small Business Administration in his first term before leading the pro-Trump super PAC, America First Action. She has been tipped to lead Trump’s Department of Commerce.
Another key wrestling ally is Dana White, the head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the world’s biggest mixed martial arts organisation. White introduced the President-elect at this year’s Republican National Convention and has credited Trump for UFC’s success, once saying, “Nobody took us seriously, except Donald Trump.” Steven Cheung, Trump’s belligerent campaign spokesman, was formerly UFC director of communications.
Trump certainly wasn’t shy of bringing up wrestling on the campaign trail, and his longstanding involvement in the sport helped him to enlist the support of retired high-profile wrestlers such as Hulk Hogan and Ted DiBiase.
Trump recorded an election video with retired former wrestling legend Mark Calaway, better known by his ring name The Undertaker, and former WWE wrestler Kane, who under his real name Glenn Jacobs, is now Republican Mayor of Knox County, Tennessee. Other wrestlers crossed the line in their support for Donald Trump.
Introducing the newest Brother of Destruction – and next President of the United States – @realDonaldTrump! pic.twitter.com/rcNOolFB0S
Professional wrestler Jake Hager, known as Jack Swagger in WWE contests, was reportedly recently dropped from a wrestling event in Connecticut after he referred to abortion as “killing babies” and “murder” and called his former boss, All Elite Wrestling co-founder, Tony Khan, “a communist” for allegedly requesting Hager dial down his support for Trump.
During his hugely influential podcast with Joe Rogan (himself A UFC commentator) Trump said suffering a grazed ear from a bullet in an assassination attempt in July had made him a “tougher guy”, citing the exploits of mixed martial arts fighter Bo Nickal.
“In the election, you heard a lot about the elite being Democrats and run-of-the-mill Americans being Republican, and to a large degree that got mirrored in wrestling,” says a former WWE executive talking on condition of anonymity. “[Wrestling legends] Jesse Ventura, Dave Bautista, Mick Foley, even [bodybuilder-cum-Republican governor] Arnold Schwarzenegger came out for Harris but the majority of wrestlers supported Trump.”
Are wrestlers and bodybuilders more likely to support Trump or does he himself serve as a gateway to interest in those pursuits? The former, according to the WWE executive: “Wrestlers are attracted to Trump’s positions on the economy and immigration and the fact he’s a WWE Hall of Famer is an added bonus.” Teague Moore, a former student wrestling champion and now a leading wrestling consultant, says he backed Trump on policy grounds. “He is not owned by government or the autocrats that have destroyed the working class,” Moore says. “He does what he says he is going to do and will fight for the common man and women to be allowed to live freely and safely.”
This sentiment is echoed by Hollywood veteran Heywood Gould, who co-wrote the cult 1986 combat sports film Streets of Gold. “Wrestlers love how Trump comes across as so strong and muscular and talks as if he’s out to beat everybody up,” says Gould. “It’s a popular space that was wide open for him. WWE fans know that there’s no room for them with the Democrats – they couldn’t exactly imagine themselves flexing with Kamala [Harris]!”
Trump does not have anything like the same close ties with the bodybuilding community as he does with the wrestling fraternity. Yet the bodybuilders have been even more strident in their support for the president-elect. Popular, anonymous social media accounts such as the colourfully named Bronze Age Pervert (BAP) and Raw Egg Nationalist have built up huge followings blending images of buff physiques with support for Republicans, that often spills over into espousing alt-right beliefs in white nationalism and social Darwinism.
“Bodybuilding appeals to right-wing ideas of invincibility, it appeals to the heart rather than the intellect, sentiment over rationality, and we saw that in this election,” says Alan Klein, the author of Little Big Men, a study of gym culture and politics, and professor emeritus of anthropology at Northeastern University. “This idea that manhood is defined by bodybuilding and mixed martial arts appeals to the sentiments of power and that’s what Donald Trump’s right-wing populism is all about.”
It was reported by Politico that younger staffers in President Trump’s first term were reading BAP’s book Bronze Age Mindset and as of last July JD Vance was following both BAP and Raw Egg Nationalist on Twitter/X. Yet mainstream Republicans, never mind Democrats, will be hoping that bodybuilding influencers don’t influence the direction of Trump’s second term in office. BAP, reputedly Romanian-born Costin Alamariu, though he has never confirmed his identity, wrote in a 2021 essay, “I believe in rule by a military caste of men who would be able to guide society toward a morality of eugenics.”
Many alt-right bodybuilders also swear by the paleo diet, centred on nuts, vegetables and meat. Paleo diet advocates, who include billionaire right-wing venture capitalist Peter Thiel, a close ally of Trump’s running mate JD Vance, believe it maximises their chances of living to the age of 120 and beyond. “The paleo diet is all about the perfection of the human form and this idea of invulnerability and immortality,” says Klein.
While bodybuilders and wrestling forces helped Trump win a second term, it remains to be seen how durable the political alliances will be over the course of the next four years.
“Bodybuilders, wrestlers and the bro subculture is a temporary alliance and he [Trump] exploited it perfectly,” claims Klein. “[Kamala] Harris didn’t see this at all. She thought the election was about issues. It was about impressions.”