Battle of the Billionaires: Donald Trump’s time in WWE
Donald Trump came to power on a simple promise. That his administration would build an enormous border wall between the USA and Mexico. What’s more, Mexico themselves would pay for it.
It’s a simplistic and shocking act of posturing. A promise to dominate and humiliate an enemy that has no place in the world of politics. We can clearly see that it has no place in politics because Trump’s wall remains only a third built at the time of writing, ten years after he was first elected. It’s mostly refurbished parts of the border walls that already existed anyway, and, most importantly of all, Mexico hasn’t paid a cent for it. Because obviously.
It has no place in the world of politics because it was never meant to be there. It belongs in the world of professional wrestling. The world of hair vs hair matches, where the winner shaves the loser bald. The world of matches, where the loser must join the winner’s faction as a dogsbody. The world of the Crybaby match, a match where the winner puts the loser in a diaper in front of a crowd of people who paid to be there. This actually happened, by the way – Razor Ramon vs The 1-2-3 Kid. In Your House 6. I fucking hate this hobby.
I’m sure anyone with a vague understanding of what professional wrestling is can see the similarities between the worst aspects of the sport and the way Trump conducts himself as president. The faux-macho posturing, the trash talking, the blatant lies. However, the connections go beyond mere vibes. In fact, Trump has had more than a few appearances on WWE television in the past, to the point where he was a core part of one of the biggest WWE matches of the 2000s.
A match that certified his place in the WWE Hall of Fame,
How did Donald Trump get involved with the WWE?
Honestly, it was only a matter of time before Trump and the WWE got in bed with each other, because after all, WWE has always considered New York City its home turf and Trump, who considers himself a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, is a die-hard fan of all combat sports – the first time the WWE (or the WWF as it was known at the time) worked with the Trump Organisation was when the fourth and fifth editions of Wrestlemania (the promotion’s answer to the Super Bowl) were hosted at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City.
However, when one thinks of Trump and the WWE, there’s only one thing that comes to mind: the cringeworthy Battle of the Billionaires of 2007 – at Wrestlemania 23, Trump and Vince McMahon both picked out a champion to fight a match on their behalf.
The former picked the then-up-and-coming star Bobby Lashley, and the latter picked out the (dearly departed) Samoan powerhouse Umaga – both billionaires put their hair on the line, and the sheer ludicrousness of the angle led to Wrestlemania 23 setting a record for the most amount of Pay Per View buys for a WWE event at the time.
McMahon was put in the barber’s chair at the end of the match, and the angle is one of the more remembered aspects of an actually pretty cracking Wrestlemania. Since 2016, though, it’s been hard to look back at Trump’s involvement in anything WWE-related and see anything other than the world’s premier wrestling company whitewashing the image of a wannabe fascist dictator. Then you see the similar nature of the crimes that McMahon and Trump have been accused of when it comes to women, and see the sick truth of the matter.
They wanted to work together because they saw so much of themselves in each other.