Is Ron DeSantis wrestling's next heel?

After his WWE boos in Tampa, a case for Florida’s governor to go full villain.

You do not want to lose the wrestling fans, OK? Few folks are so passionately clear-eyed about their heroes and foes. Today’s wrestling supporters love to marinate in juicy narratives, foretell plot twists with the acuity of Columbo and sniff out bull from miles away. We all need wrestling fans on our proverbial teams.

And yet, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis visited a WWE event at Tampa’s Yuengling Center over Memorial Day weekend, he appeared to have lost them. Multiple videos capture booming boos from the stands punctuated by chants of “YOU SUCK!” DeSantis tried to laugh it off and snap selfies with those not actively eviscerating his existence.

Were the booing fans ardent supporters of President Donald Trump? After all, Trump gleefully and openly despises DeSantis, his personal punching meatball. Trump has emasculated and excoriated his one-time primary foe so many times you’d think he was John Cena with the Five-Knuckle Shuffle. Trump once said of DeSantis, “We hit him hard, and now he’s like a wounded falling bird from the skies,” which might be the most poetic sentence Trump ever constructed. Trump would rather hang out with Marco Rubio!

Then again, maybe the stands were full of progressives, of Bernie Sanders stans pushing for a more equitable future in which all are free to wear sequins and lace-up boots. Maybe the jeers stemmed from some headspace in the middle, from Floridians weary of DeSantis’s who-me schtick, his secretive anti-environmental schemes, his moves to ban books from schools and fluoride from water. Maybe the fans were legal scholars closely following the criminal probe related to Hope Florida. Or maybe they’re just broke from paying their homeowner’s insurance.

The why matters less. Because viewed in another light, this hate-shellacking offers a golden opportunity for a rebrand. DeSantis, increasingly irrelevant in Florida chambers and on the national stage, has a chance to reclaim a spot in the political sun. He just has to lean into Spandex and his off-putting nature.

https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2025/05/30/desantis-wwe-wrestling-boo-tampa-casey/