(CNN) \u2014 Big Bad Brody King stood in one corner, long gray-streaked beard jutting out, all hulking muscle and tattoos above his barbed-wire logo trunks. In the other corner, hair combed neatly back and beard tidily trimmed, stood Maxwell Jacob Friedman, the reigning All Elite Wrestling World Champion. With the two pro wrestlers about to square up in a Wednesday night match in Las Vegas this month, the fired-up crowd spoke with one voice: \u201cF**k ICE!\u201d<\/p>\n
The video, with a stiff-faced Friedman casting wide-eyed sideways looks at the crowd, quickly spread outside the circles of wrestling fandom. A great match is a great match, and a wildly charismatic babyface or heel has been known to make the leap to Hollywood stardom and beyond. But rarely does a crowd reaction at an event make a splash in the broader world.<\/p>\n
Professional wrestling has always drawn on politics as a source of melodrama. There was Hulk Hogan, who stomped into the ring while his theme song, \u201cReal American,\u201d blared over the speakers, rousing the arena for him to fight the \u201cforeign\u201d Iron Sheik. Or Sgt. Slaughter, whose villainous persona made him a Saddam Hussein sympathizer at the height of the Gulf War.<\/p>\n
But the chants at the recent AEW match showcased a new, more specific way that wrestling is grappling with politics. If American political life has, as commentators say, come more and more to resemble pro wrestling, then pro wrestling has also evolved to meet it. Where wrestlers used to work in broad, cartoonish themes that appealed to the agreed-on sympathies of the entire audience, today the question of what the good guys stand for is a live dispute, matching the conflicts playing out in the real world.<\/p>\n
King has raised money to support immigrants in Minnesota and has worn an \u201cAbolish ICE\u201d shirt in the ring; \u201cHangman\u201d Adam Page gave a speech in Spanish during a show in Mexico City, reminiscing to the roaring crowd about working side by side with Mexican farm workers in the US and praising their values and work ethic \u2014 and then declaring that he planned to hunt down his rival Jon Moxley and \u201cLe voy a partir su madre!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018You can actually watch two ideas fight each other in the ring\u2019<\/p>\n
The most prominent political chant in wrestling history is the \u201cUSA\u201d chant, for jeering wrestlers who hailed from outside the US, said Eero Laine, a professor of theater who studies the history of professional wrestling at the State University of New York at Buffalo. World Wrestling Entertainment also had a tag team named the Real Americans, portrayed by American wrestler Jack Swagger and Swiss wrestler Cesaro, who led crowds in a \u201cWe the People\u201d chant.<\/p>\n
Wrestlers, Laine said, \u201ccould embody an idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can actually watch two ideas fight each other in the ring, and you can cheer and boo for each of them,\u201d he said. \u201cSo there\u2019s a kind of morality play at work in the ring.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sometimes wrestlers have even portrayed real political figures, as when impersonators of then-Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton squared off during the 2008 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n
But the anti-ICE calls from the crowd at AEW, Laine said, \u201care interesting in that they support a political stance associated with one of the wrestlers, but they are not necessarily directly related to what\u2019s happening in the ring. And the chant is not part of the repertoire of standard wrestling chants.\u201d<\/p>\n
A president in the hall of fame<\/p>\n
The embrace of contemporary issues is part of a larger, politically shaded rivalry playing out in the industry, between the 7-year-old AEW and the industry\u2019s ruling juggernaut for generations, WWE (Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN\u2019s parent corporation, owns a minority stake in AEW).<\/p>\n
WWE, founded by the McMahon family, started in the 1950s as a relatively small company based in the northeastern United States, then rolled up its regional rivals in the 1980s to dominate wrestling coast to coast. It is the largest wrestling promotion in the world, and it regularly garners double, if not triple the audience of AEW, according to Wrestlenomics<\/a>.<\/p>\n As WWE grew, the conservative political involvement of the McMahon family grew with it. Vince McMahon, who purchased the company from his father in 1982 and was executive chairman before resigning in 2024, is a personal friend of President Donald Trump. His wife, Linda McMahon, is the US education secretary. His son-in-law, Paul Levesque \u2014 also known by his wrestling name, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, or Triple H \u2014 is the vice chair of the President\u2019s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition.<\/p>\n Trump himself is a member of the WWE Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n AEW\u2019s willingness to have wrestlers take stances on contemporary issues has become, for fans, a point of distinction between the promotions, drawing audiences wary of the McMahons\u2019 connections back to sports entertainment.<\/p>\n Scott Lange, of Atlanta, was a wrestling fan when he was in college. Wrestlers like former Olympic gold medal winner Kurt Angle and Dwayne \u201cThe Rock\u201d Johnson were popular, and he enjoyed how it all seemed simultaneously over-the-top, yet self-aware.<\/p>\n But then there was a lot of \u201ctawdry, ugly stuff,\u201d he said. He stopped watching for 20 years.<\/p>\n AEW brought him back, though. And in large part, he said, it was because the wrestlers were allowed to express themselves more freely. A lot of the main roster is \u201cpolitically aware and seems to care about making the country a better place,\u201d Lange said.<\/p>\n (Representatives for King declined to comment. Representatives for AEW, Friedman, and WWE did not respond to requests for comment.)<\/p>\n \u2018Controversy Creates Cash\u2019<\/p>\n The founding family of AEW, like the McMahons, rose from relatively humble origins. The father of AEW founder Tony Khan, Shahid Khan, was born in Pakistan in 1950, and moved to the US when he was 16 for college. While still in college, he began working for Flex-N-Gate, an automotive supplier. By the time he was 30, he bought the company. By 2012, he had bought the NFL\u2019s Jacksonville Jaguars.<\/p>\n Tony Khan founded AEW in 2019. While Shahid Khan has called himself a \u201cbig fan\u201d of President Trump\u2019s economic policies, and donated to his 2017 inauguration, Shahid did not donate<\/a> to his 2025 inauguration and has said<\/a> he differs with Trump on social issues like religion and immigration. Both Khans have donated to both political parties, according to public filings.<\/p>\n Unlike the McMahons, Tony Khan has said that he doesn\u2019t like to publicly involve himself in politics.<\/p>\n But if wrestlers do so, it\u2019s all part of the show.<\/p>\n \u201cThe wrestlers, they are themselves and that\u2019s part of what makes the show great,\u201d Khan said<\/a> on a media call this past September. \u201cWhether everyone agrees with everything every wrestler says or not is not the point of the show to me. It\u2019s that it\u2019s a great wrestling show.\u201d<\/p>\n The key to understanding business strategy in wrestling, Laine said, is in the title of a book by the former wrestling executive and WWE Hall of Fame member Eric Bischoff: \u201cControversy Creates Cash.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the bottom line with wrestling, it\u2019s attention,\u201d Laine said. \u201cThey\u2019re selling attention.\u201d<\/p>\n Regardless of its ownership\u2019s Trump ties, the WWE shows signs it recognizes the usefulness of playing to the other side, too. Lately, Laine noted, the WWE\u2019s star villain Becky Lynch has been using some familiar-sounding language while playing up her status as a sore loser. \u201cI\u2019ve gotten counsel from the best lawyers in the world,\u201d Lynch declared in one recent in-story interview.<\/a> \u201cI have won 100% of my matches that haven\u2019t been rigged!\u201d<\/p>\n The real point, Lange said, is still the spectacle.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t necessarily want didactic political speech out of wrestlers,\u201d Lange said. \u201cBut I enjoy watching a company where I feel like people\u2019s hearts are in the right place. They\u2019re aware of what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou can subtly comment on the world and the things that are happening without beating your heads in about it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The-CNN-Wire<\/p>\n \u2122 & \u00a9 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n \u200bCOPYRIGHT 2025 THE-CNN-WIRE (TM) & \u00a9 2025 CABLE NEWS NETWORK, INC., A TIME WARNER COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(CNN) \u2014 Big Bad Brody King stood in one corner, long gray-streaked beard jutting out, all hulking muscle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-468410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}