If President Donald Trump's recent attacks on television personalities, journalists and political rivals feel like something straight out of the pro wrestling circuit, it may not be a coincidence.
Wrestling aficionados say the president, who has a long history with the game, has borrowed the time-tested tactics of the squared circle to cultivate the ultimate antihero character, a figure who wins at all costs, incites outrage and follows nobody's rules but his own.
"In our terminology, he's playing it to the hilt," said former World Wrestling Entertainment writer Dan Madigan.
On Sunday, Trump's apparent fondness for wrestling emerged in a tweeted mock video that shows him pummeling a man in a business suit — his face obscured by the CNN logo — outside a wrestling ring. It was not clear who produced the brief video, which appeared to be a doctored version of Trump's 2007 appearance on World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. But it was tweeted from the president's official Twitter account.
Madigan was first struck by the parallels last summer when Trump was introduced at the Republican National Convention. There was a backlit Trump, unveiled in stark silhouette, who then sauntered onto stage at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, just like wrestling's most infamous antihero, The Undertaker.
"His demeanor, duration of his walk to the podium, his playing to the crowd. ... Pure Undertaker," Madigan said.
And Trump's tiger-like pacing on stage behind Hillary Clinton during the second presidential debate last fall in St. Louis? That's how wrestlers stalk their opponents during pre-match taunting sessions.
Jake Pearson.
Full story at Yahoo News.
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