After receiving rambunctious adoration from the fighters and crowd of UFC 314 on Saturday night, President Donald Trump spoke to the press pool, calling the ovation during his arrival a “great honor.”

“It says we’re doing a good job. If we weren’t doing a good job, we’d get the opposite.” Trump is extremely familiar with the opposite reaction.

Endeavor is the majority owner of both Ultimate Fighting Championship and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). While Trump has been embracing the UFC arm of Endeavor, he has decades and decades more experience dealing with the WWE. But it’s highly unlikely the real-life WWE Hall of Famer will be attending this weekend’s WrestleMania 41.

WrestleMania, the granddaddy of them all, the biggest weekend in pro wrestling, is competing with Jesus Christ and the Easter Bunny. Taking over two nights at Allegiant Stadium, where the Las Vegas Raiders play, WWE’s signature live event is on Easter weekend. The main event of both nights are highly anticipated and seemingly at odds with the politics surrounding the event.

The Night 1 main event is a triple-threat match among CM Punk, Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins. The in-ring storyline has been fantastic (they’re fighting over the love of pro wrestling/a father figure named Paul Heyman) but the out-of-ring backgrounds of all three performers only enhance the match.

Punk is an extremely proud Chicagoan who happens to be a Democrat and recently wore a Chicago Teachers Union shirt on the Feb. 24 edition of WWE Raw. 

Reigns is a real-life cousin of Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock, a man so popular he’s been floated as a presidential candidate who also made a Biden endorsement video in 2020; he regretted it and chose not to endorse in 2024. Reigns is also a real-life cancer survivor. 

Rollins was trained to wrestle by Punk, was formerly engaged to a neo-Nazi (unbeknownst to him?) and is currently married to a fantastic women’s wrestler from Ireland who also thrived in WWE and Japanese rings.

So we’ve got one guy who openly supports unions, a leukemia survivor who depends on modern medicine to live and one guy who might not be too fond of strict borders.

WrestleMania Night 2 headliners (Mania has been two nights since 2020) are Cody Rhodes and John Cena. 

Rhodes is the real-life son of Dusty Rhodes, a beloved wrestler known as the American Dream. Dusty was the son of a plumber, playing up his blue-collar sports. Cody embraces the same gimmick, calling himself the American Nightmare. The current WWE champion, Cody Rhodes is a beloved face (good guy) husband to a Black woman, Brandi, father to a cute kid and also runs a wrestling school out of Atlanta. 

Cena portrayed Trump on Saturday Night Live in 2016, is Make-A-Wish’s biggest wish granter and learned to speak Mandarin to break into the Chinese market. 

The top of the card is a mixed bag of beliefs and political connections, which is great. WWE has never been more financially sound and popular globally. The death of the monoculture may mean we won’t see any more figures on par with Stone Cold Steve Austin or Hulk Hogan, but the globalization of the industry means more eyes and attention than ever before. 

If any of the five guys main-eventing WrestleMania 41 behaved like anyone at the top of a UFC card, or their CEO or main announcer, they’d be relegated to the midcard.

That stuff works for actual bloodsport, when athletes are easily embraced and dismissed once the next guy is able to take the belt. But in pro wrestling, it’s not just about in-ring acumen.

When it’s predetermined, when a large part of your job is being able to emotionally connect with thousands of people by only using a microphone, you need to be able to make people like you, not just hate the other. That’s why you probably won’t see any politician make an appearance at WrestleMania 41 like we did with UFC 314, a parade of Trump Cabinet officials and others like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

Before he was a politician, Trump made quite a few appearances at Mania. WrestleMania IV (1988) and V (1989) were hosted at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. He was at Mania VII (1991), when then-girlfriend Marla Maples was a celebrity timekeeper.

He teased a presidential run at WrestleMania XX (2004). The infamous Battle of the Billionaires was at WrestleMania 23 (2007). He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame at WrestleMania 29 weekend in 2013. 

The last few times Trump was on WWE programming, he was heavily booed. At his 2013 WWE Hall of Fame induction, after being called a “WrestleMania institution” and a potential presidential run was teased by Vince McMahon during his introduction, Trump took the stage to boos. This was a crowd that did not like the future president. The following night at WrestleMania 29, Trump was booed again, this time by a full MetLife Stadium. 

Those 2013 appearances were the last time Trump was heavily featured on WWE programming. You’d think that WWE, with more than three decades of history with Trump, and as a wrestling promotion that was once led by the former administrator of the Small Business Administration and current Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, would want to highlight their ties. But they didn’t and they don’t. Probably because it’s not best for business. 

Trump is not a popular figure in WWE, past or present. Those boos in 2013 are not an outlier. His beliefs and his administration’s beliefs are not popular with the extremely diverse professional wrestling fanbase. If this sounds crazy, just revisit Hulk Hogan’s most recent WWE appearance. 

On the inaugural WWE Raw on Netflix episode on Jan. 6, 2025, Hogan came out to promote his new beer, Real American Beer. He was booed out of the building. He was not supposed to be booed. This wasn’t black-and-white, nWo Hollywood Hogan. This was the red and yellow, the Real American Hogan. A chorus of boos. So much booing, the mainstream media picked up the story. So much booing, Hogan pulled out of a future taping of WWE’s Saturday Night’s Main Event on NBC.

Hogan was booed for his support of Trump and his racist tirades made on a sex tape. What Hogan represents is antithetical to the top of the card at this year’s WrestleMania. What Trump and this administration represents is antithetical to the top of the card at this year’s WrestleMania. But Hogan is literally represented on the mat WWE uses every single Monday night. 

WWE began selling on-the-mat advertisements in March 2024. Following the lead of their Endeavor family member UFC, viewers are now reminded to eat a Snickers and enjoy one of Hogan’s aforementioned Real American Beers every time they watch WWE Raw.

Another of the current ads seen on WWE mats every Monday is for Riyadh Season, one of the Saudi government’s “entertainment, cultural, and sporting events,” which includes WWE’s Crown Jewel premium live event. If you’re a wrestling fan, you’re already familiar with the fraught and extremely controversial partnership between WWE and the Saudis. If you’re not a wrestling fan and are familiar, you’re probably a John Oliver viewer. 

Is it possible to disconnect from politics while watching sports entertainment when the aforementioned Saudi government ad is on the mat, former WWE CEO Linda McMahon is currently dismantling the Department of Education, and Hulk Hogan is shilling for beer? No. And that’s fine. But it’s a horrible, horrible idea to walk away from WWE for political reasons. It’s an even worse idea to dismiss all of what wrestling represents. 

UFC may garner more headlines and coverage because it’s “real” and WWE is “fake.” But WWE is much more representative of the American electorate and is as popular on every level. The wrestling fan base is slightly more diverse and reflective of the electorate, with more people aged 40-plus watching performers in the squared circle than grapplers in the octagon. The top of the WWE card is proof that more Americans want diversity and inclusion than populism and isolationism.

WrestleMania 41 is the first big “test” since Trump’s second term began for socially conscious fans of sports entertainment. It’s also a chance for a politician from either party to engage with a large fan base and enter an arena the president dares not tread. If Trump is too afraid of the WWE fanbase, maybe Sen. Bernie Sanders could make an appearance, if he’s not too busy after attending the second weekend of Coachella.