There’s something about facing 50,000 fans in a stadium performing in a wrestling match that really gets the adrenaline pumping. It takes a certain kind of individual who actively seeks the spotlight and interaction with ordinary people that makes a professional wrestler successful.
In many respects, you can say the same for politics. Purest may say it’s about the issues, but these days, especially with the ascent of Donald Trump, showmanship and performance act are just as important to a successful political career as much as ideas and a connection to the people. Based on that observation, it is not surprising that wrestling and politics have mixed and mingled throughout the years.
The Donald himself before he became President waded into the stage of professional wrestling on more than one occasion (Trump is technically still a member of the WWE Hall of Fame under the Celebrity Wing category). And recently, there is talk of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson becoming a viable presidential candidate for 2020.
Aside from those very well known names, there have been many wrestling personalities or wrestlers themselves who have waded into the political arena, especially at a local or state level. Let’s take a look at some who have done so in the past, as well as current performers who are pursuing political careers after a long career in the ring…or maybe while still actively in the ring.
Jerry “The King” Lawler
We all know about Jerry Lawler’s long illustrious career in sports entertainment, both inside the ring as well as being one of the most recognized colour commentators in the wrestling industry. Lawler has also opened up some businesses as well as dabbled in being an artist of some renown, as well as minor acting roles (his relationship with the late Andy Kaufman was the subject of the Jim Carrey 1999 comedy Man on the Moon abou Kaufman’s life).
Above all else, Lawler is a long time devoted native of his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. So much so, that he decided that he wanted to become the city’s mayor. In 1999, Lawler ran for the job as Memphis mayor against incumbent mayor Willie Herenton and a sitting city councilman. Despite not having any prior political experience, Lawler ended up beating twelve of the fifteen candidates, finishing with 11% of the vote, but still trailed Herenton who ended up winning reelection.
But before you dismiss Lawler’s run as some quixotic publicity stunt, he was actually quite serious about providing an alternative political leadership for Memphis. Lawler’s platform at the time included promises of safe streets, beautification of the city, improving the quality of education as well as creating more parks, fighting traffic congestion and lowering property taxes. When you’ve seen the guy who kept on talking about proverbial “puppies” at the commentary table through so many years, you’d wonder what came in and replaced Jerry Lawler with a seemingly normal sounding political candidate.
While he was not successful, Lawler may have been an early advent of the type of political candidate that is proliferating today, one that is leveraging their celebrity status for their run at political office. Lawler himself was inspired by the next person on this list to run for mayor of Memphis, and unlike “The King” this particular individual found success in politics.
Jerry “The Body” Ventura
Ventura was a Navy Seal and former wrestler during the 1970s and color commentator during the 1980s before leaving the business in 1992. Since then he made sporadic appearance on WWE television during the early 2000s, his most infamous appearance being his role as guest referee for the WWE championship match at Summerslam 1999. However, Ventura’s latter appearance were in part due to his rise as a politician.
Ventura served as Mayor of the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park from 1991 to 1995, defeating a 25 year incumbent for the job. In 1998, desiring to provide voters with an alternative to the traditional two party system of Democrats and Republicans, Ventura ran as a candidate for Minnesota governor on the ticket of the Reform Party. If you take a look at some of Ventura’s campaign ads from back then, you can see why he would be considered an outsider and “unconventional”.
In this ad below, Ventura attempted to transition his nickname from “The Body” to “The Mind”, albeit with limited success later on because the latter never really stuck.
If you really want to see Jesse Ventura the campaigning politician actually hold his own and not be considered some washed up gimmick wrestler from the 80s, his full debate with his opponents from that 1998 campaign is still up somewhere on YouTube.
Ventura went on to serve only one four year term as governor, stepping down in 2003 and afterwards going onto a career as a radio host and author, eventually delving into numerous conspiracy theories such as whether the 9-11 terrorist attacks were “an inside job” by the American government. His name kept getting dropped as a potential third party presidential candidate but nothing serious like his 1998 gubernatorial campaign ever surfaced.
Now you may be saying to yourselves, these two examples given happened over twenty years ago. Surely wrestlers these days have the sense to stick to what they know and not go into the dirty world of politics. But you’d be wrong, as these following examples demonstrate.
Steve “Mongo” McMichael
The former WCW wrestler and professional football player may have been a member of a reformed Four Horsemen during the late 90s, and moved onto some other professional sports roles as well as having opened his own restaurant out in the Chicago suburbs. That was apparently enough for Mongo to give a shot at running for a political role in 2013.
Mongo sought to become the mayor of Romeoville, Illinois, where he is from and where his restaurant is located. He had previously resided in Chicago in a downtown condo but moved to Romeoville so his daughter could grow up in a small town environment. McMichael said at the time his small business experience as a restaurant owner in the area made him “uniquely qualified for the job”.
When asked whether his lack of political experience would interfere with his ability to carry out mayoral duties, McMichael told the Associated Press he also didn’t have experience at professional football or wrestling before he tried them, and had great success in those endeavors. But in the end, McMichael was not successful but ended up with almost 40% of the vote against the incumbent mayor of Romeoville.
Booker T
The former 5 time WCW champion and current WWE Hall of Famer has had stints as General Manager of Smackdown (prior to the brand split) and is currently a color commentator on RAW. But for those of you who have followed Booker’s career closely, you should know that he is born and raised in Houston, Texas, a state known for training wrestling talent like the Von Ericks or Stone Cold Steve Austin.
Booker T had taken a brief absence from the RAW commentary table to help flood victims in Houston in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. While I have no doubt that Booker’s reasons was to be with his family, friends and community during this difficult time, doing something charitable like this manages to keep Booker T’s name in the public eye beyond just in wrestling, which he will need. Earlier this year, Booker (aka Booker Huffman as he is legally known as) announced he was planning to run for the position of Houston mayor in 2019, challenging incumbent Sylvester Turner.
Like other wrestlers who decided to venture into politics, Booker T is going to have to stare down criticism that this is just a publicity stunt, especially if he plans to run against an incumbent mayor seeking another term, answering the question what makes him better qualified that the man already doing the job. He’s got a unique backstory: spent some time in prison as a youth, which would give Booker T a deeper insight into the struggles of young people in Houston. Booker T also runs the Reality of Wrestling indy promotion based in Houston, giving him some credentials as a business owner in the city.
While Booker T has only announced a run thus far and no actual campaigning seems to be evident, at least one of his fellow WWE colleagues has already actively started his own campaign to be a mayor.
Kane (aka Glenn Jacobs)
The Big Red Machine has been a staple of WWE programming for 20 years, recently having been on Smackdown Live. Recently, Kane has been written off WWE television recently, probably because he’s running to be the mayor of Knox County, Tennessee.
Kane’s political activities have been documented for years, specifically with Libertarian politics. Kane, or Glenn Jacobs, has been active in Libertarian political circles for years, supporting former Congressman Ron Paul’s presidential bid in 2008. He is a member of the Free State Project and delivered a speech at the organization’s 2009 New Hampshire Liberty Forum. He has also spoken at the Ludwig von Mises Institute an anarcho-capitalist think-tank for promoting the Austrian school of economics.
Politics is not just some abstract theory to be talked about constantly; Jacobs and his wife are also small business owners, operating an Allstate insurance office in Knoxville. Being a proponent of small government libertarianism, it is no small wonder that Jacobs is running for mayor as the Republican candidate, the closest party to his own ideological beliefs. Jacobs’ social media accounts already show that he is actively campaigning, as well as receiving some rather high profile endorsements.
Undoubtedly Jacobs is running as himself during this campaign, but looking at the campaign ad he put out I can’t help noticing the small red flame icon at the bottom right hand corner. I’m sure it’s meant to represent the burning flame of Liberty, as he is a Libertarian…but I can’t help feel there was a little influence from “The Devil’s Favourite Demon” in there.
UPDATE: Jacobs ended up winning the Republican primary in May 2018, then went on to win in a landslide for Knox County mayor in August of that year.
And finally, thanks to a fellow SLTD contributor, and as a nod to the UK wrestling fanbase:
Len Ironside
Beach Ballroom Wrestling (C)AJL 1986-04-17
Len Ironside
Showing maximum effort, Aberdeen Regional Councillor Len Ironside strives for the winning submission with a Boston crab hold in last night’s world lightweight wrestling bout against champion Johnny Saint in the Beach Ballroom.
ABERDEEN JOURNALS Ltd. 17.4.1986.
Used P&J 18.4.1986.
Used EE 19.10.2016 the aberdonian
Beach Ballroom
Ironside is a long time local politician serving the Aberdeen City Council as a member from the Labour Party, who only recently stepped down from politics after 35 years as a local councillor. But before embarking on such a long career in politics, Ironside was a professional wrestler during the 1970s, holding the European and Commonwealth lightweight, and Scottish welterweight belts.
These are just some examples of former grapplers or current ones in the squared circle who have embarked, or tried to have embarked into a career in politics. I think more wrestlers should go into politics, as they have a unique insight into how people are with all the travelling they do and how adaptive they are to being in the public eye. What do you think?
An average professional doing the 9-5 grind who really loves wrestling across all platforms. Here's hoping wrestlers finally get some basic workers rights in 2021.
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