‘It’s Kane! It’s Kane! It’s gotta be Kane!’
That’s how I imagine the announcement was made when Glenn Jacobs, best known as WWE wrestler Kane, won the election to be Mayor of Knox County, Tennessee.
No, you’ve not entered an episode of Black Mirror, this is real life. A man whose entire schtick/gimmick was based on his love of pyro has become mayor of the third most populated county in the state of Tennessee, choke-slamming and tombstoning the opposition in the process – figuratively, not literally.
Running for the Republican party, Kane Jacobs beat Democratic candidate Linda Haney 31,739 votes to 16,611. He was born in Spain but grew up near St. Louis, Missouri. However, as the Big Red Machine/Kane, he was billed as hailing from ‘Hell’ or ‘Parts Unknown’.
His in-ring debut was an iconic moment in WWE’s history, at Badd Blood: In Your House on October 5, 1997, he interrupted the Hell in the Cell match between the Undertaker and Shawn Michaels, delivering a tombstone to ‘Taker to give the Heartbreak Kid the win. How does that not scream Mayor material?
It appears the 51-year-old ex-wrestler’s’ promises of tax cuts and improvements to education and infrastructure won him the votes to become Knox County’s 29th Mayor.
His former employees were one of the first to congratulate Jacobs on winning the election.
On Twitter, they wrote:
Congratulations to @KaneWWE on being elected Mayor of Knox County, Tennessee!
According to Jacobs, when he first announced his political ambitions he was greeted with ‘pretty astounding laughter’ from the political elite which only ‘made me want it even more’, as reported by The Independent. Has no one learned their lessons from taking the piss out of celebrities running for office? Look what happened the last time.
Hopefully, Kane can do more for the people of Knox County than Trump is doing for the United States. He could follow in the example of Arnold Schwarzenegger who did a lot for the state of California when he was their governor.
With Jacobs taking office it does mean he will formally step down from his duties at the WWE and to be honest it’s the right time. At 51, he’s just about keeping up with today’s in-ring talent and he can hang up his boots and mask knowing he’s tussled with the best of them. He’s grappled with the likes of Triple H, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Undertaker as part of WWE’s golden era (aka the Attitude Era).
Now he’ll be taking on a different kind of opponent, the kind he can’t choke slam to the fires of hell.
However, he isn’t the first wrestler who’s transitioned from the ring to the political stage. In 1999 Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura became the 38th Governor of Minnesota and was in office all the way up to January 2003. More recently, Linda McMahon, the wife of Vince, stepped down from her role as WWE CEO to run for US Senator for Connecticut – also a Republican.
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