{"id":33643,"date":"2017-07-03T10:51:48","date_gmt":"2017-07-03T10:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=33643"},"modified":"2017-07-03T10:51:48","modified_gmt":"2017-07-03T10:51:48","slug":"smackdown-trumps-insult-act-comes-pro-wrestling-hype","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/entertainment\/smackdown-trumps-insult-act-comes-pro-wrestling-hype.html","title":{"rendered":"Smackdown! Trump’s insult act comes from pro wrestling hype"},"content":{"rendered":"

Smackdown! Trump’s insult act comes from pro wrestling hype<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Making bombastic boasts. Dropping signature catch phrases. Attaching insults to rivals\u2019 names. Shouting down perceived enemies.<\/span>
\nIf President Donald Trump\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s rules but his own.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn our terminology, he\u2019s playing it to the hilt,\u201d said former World Wrestling Entertainment writer Dan Madigan.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Sunday, Trump\u2019s apparent fondness for wrestling emerged in a tweeted mock video that shows him pummeling a man in a business suit \u2014 his face obscured by the CNN logo \u2014 outside a wrestling ring. It was not clear who produced the brief video, which appeared to be a doctored version of Trump\u2019s 2007 appearance on World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. But it was tweeted from the president\u2019s official Twitter account.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s most infamous antihero, The Undertaker.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHis demeanor, duration of his walk to the podium, his playing to the crowd. \u2026 Pure Undertaker,\u201d Madigan said.<\/span><\/p>\n

And Trump\u2019s tiger-like pacing on stage behind Hillary Clinton during the second presidential debate last fall in St. Louis? That\u2019s how wrestlers stalk their opponents during pre-match taunting sessions.<\/span><\/p>\n

In subsequent months of Trump\u2019s tweets and public feuds, it became clear to Madigan and other former WWE writers that, consciously or not, Trump was channeling professional wrestling in his politics.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe parallels are uncanny,\u201d said Domenic Cotter, a producer who in the mid-2000s cut backstage segments for WWE.<\/span><\/p>\n

Depending on your political affiliation, the writers said, Trump is playing one of two classic wrestling characters: The \u201cheel,\u201d or ultimate bad guy, who wins at all costs; or the modern-day wrestling protagonist, dubbed a \u201cface\u201d or \u201cbaby face,\u201d in wrestling parlance.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think of Donald Trump as the ultimate baby face,\u201d Cotter said, \u201calmost in the ilk of \u2018Stone Cold\u2019 Steve Austin, who was this rage-against-the-machine, anti-authority and establishment figure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Cotter saw Trump employ a classic pro wrestling tactic during his first news conference as president-elect, when he ordered CNN reporter Jim Acosta to be quiet and barked, \u201cYou are fake news!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn wrestling terminology, he cut a promo on that CNN reporter and got over him, basically,\u201d Cotter said. \u201cIn wrestling, some swarmy heel is going on and on and on and the baby face quips a response right back and the audience goes crazy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps Trump comes by it naturally. He hosted back-to-back WrestleMania events in his Atlantic City, New Jersey, Trump Plaza in 1988 and 1989. And then, most famously, there was a mock \u201cBattle of the Billionaires\u201d in 2007 when he body-slammed and then shaved the head of WWE boss Vince McMahon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most recently, he picked McMahon\u2019s wife, Linda, who ran twice unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut, to head the Small Business Administration.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ranjan Chhibber, a humanities and film studies professor at Florida State College in Jacksonville who has written about pro wrestling, said Trump is most clearly portrayed in the ring by the industry\u2019s current bad-boy-turned-hero: CM Punk, a brash 38-year-old wrestler whom writers have dubbed the \u201cVoice of the Voiceless.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

CM Punk\u2019s character often says he will say things no one else dares to say, and wrestling writers have created a new narrative for him that\u2019s almost tailor-made for the current political environment of leaked emails and unauthorized dossiers: revealing the secrets of what happens backstage.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is pro-wrestling writing genius,\u201d Chhibber said.<\/span><\/p>\n

In wrestling, writers create season-long dramas that turn the mat into a stage for fantasy. Narratives pit good against evil, stronger personalities win over more subdued ones, and announcers legitimize the at-any-costs tactics of the \u201cheels.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When Trump publicly supports Russia\u2019s Vladimir Putin, depicted by the U.S. intelligence services as a sort of global \u201cheel,\u201d he is effectively playing the role of the announcer who builds up the bad boy in the ring, justifying his alpha-dog behavior, Madigan said.<\/span><\/p>\n

And when Trump assigns prefixes to his political rivals\u2019 names (think \u201clow I.Q. Crazy Mika\u201d Brzezinski or \u201cCrooked Hillary\u201d Clinton) he is effectively emulating the longtime wrestling announcer Bobby \u201cThe Brain\u201d Hennan, who cheered on \u201cheels\u201d over rule-following \u201cbaby face\u201d wrestlers he disparaged.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe hero is boring. He does the same vanilla thing,\u201d Madigan said. \u201cYou always watch what the bad guy says and does.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.abqjournal.com\/1027244\/smackdown-trumps-insult-act-comes-from-pro-wrestling-hype.html<\/span><\/p>\n

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