I don’t want to lose wrestling fans, very few people have a very enthusiastic look at heroes and enemies. Today’s wrestling supporters love marinating in juicy stories, twisting with Colombo’s acuity and sniffing bulls from miles away. We all need wrestling fans on our proverb team.
Still, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis visited a WWE event at Tampa’s Jungling Center over anniversary weekend, he appeared to have lost them. Multiple videos capture booming boos from the stands interrupted by the chant “You Suck!” Desantis tried to laugh at it and snap a selfie with people who weren’t actively avoiding his presence.
Were boo fans an enthusiastic supporter of President Donald Trump? After all, Trump is willing to openly spi on DeSantis, the meatball of his personal punch. Trump expeditions with his once-major enemy, many times he thought he was John Cena with a 5 knuckle shuffle. Trump once said of DeSantis, “We hit him violently, and now he’s like a fallen bird injured from the sky.” Trump would rather hang out with Marco Rubio!
Again, the stands may have been full of progressives. Bernie Sanders Stans wants a more equitable future where everything can be worn freely with sequins and lace-up boots. Maybe the jeers were born out of DeSantis’ who-me schtick, his secret anti-environmental scheme, books from school, some headspace in the middle, from a Floridian tired of his movement to ban fluoride from water. Perhaps the fan was a legal scholar who closely followed a criminal investigation in connection with Hope in Florida. Or maybe it just broke by paying homeowner’s insurance.
Why it’s not important. From another perspective, this shaking of hatred offers a great opportunity for the brand. DeSantis has an opportunity to regain his spot in the political sun, becoming increasingly irrelevant in Florida’s rooms and in the national stage. He just needs to lean on the spandex and his unpleasant nature.
He has to be on his heel.
In wrestling, the heels are villains and antagonists. Heels break rules, oppose mischief and life. The heels provide a delicious contrast with the face and good people that establish the tension and roots. DeSantis is gathering behind his wife, Casey DeSantis, as Florida’s next governor. If she is platformed as Cody Rhodes of this state, DeSantis will need to bolster his own villain arc.
This requires ego death. I love how heels are disliked. Trump is the heel of a textbook. I don’t care if you call him a sewer rat. He simply entrusts his own golden statue as a sewer rat and sells miniatures that can be collected for cryptography in legally questionable business scenarios.
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Desantis, on the other hand, projects a deeply unstable desire for approval that he cannot achieve in perfect fit. For example, when he once pointed out the sugar content of a child’s ice at a campaign stop, it was both nasty and scolding. His heels would have snatched ice and threw it on the ground! A heel would have done a Military Press Powerslam on that sweet treat and launched into the A-WAH-AH-AH-AH baskets popularized by the band Disturbed!
Pros: DeSantis loves boots, we know this. He loves its perfect height, as professional wrestling is so ingrained in the drug tradition. But he needs an evil transformation. Probably full-color research and character development. Maybe baseball and something? Are you leaning against the lore of Pudding Cups?
Confidence is important regardless of the presentation. Instead of pretending to be ignorant of the plot to pave parts of Florida State Park for a golf course, he must stand proudly and speak to himself these intents to a rapt audience. “I’ll remove this condition from all the little birdies. All the little bears. Do you think you’ll hide behind the endangered Florida scrub ecosystem? Give it to the driver. Or something. We’re still brainstorming.
If he wants to save the permanent image, the government should start training yesterday. But if there is a place to perfect the tombstone pile driver against your enemies, it is Florida’s fertile wrestling land. The foundation is laid out like the elbows of people. If he plays this correctly, the booing will only be loud.
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