WWE star wins Tenn. mayor’s race despite “resounding laughter”

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Glenn Jacobs, the WWE wrestler known as Kane, has won the bout for mayor in Tennessee’s third largest county. Jacobs, a Republican who also runs an insurance and real estate company, was leading Democrat Linda Haney by a large margin with most of the votes counted in Knox County on Thursday.

The Knoxville News Sentinel reports Jacobs claimed victory at his watch party, saying his decision to seek the mayor’s job was met at first with “pretty resounding laughter” from some politicians.

WWE congratulated Jacobs on Twitter.

Jacobs won a close primary in May. Results of the primary were delayed when the county’s election reporting website crashed after a concerted cyberattack that experts deemed “malicious.”

Haney ran small businesses with her husband before she retired. She was considered an underdog in the solidly-Republican county.

Jacobs praised Haney for running a campaign in a county that’s hard to win as a Democrat, CBS affiliate WVLT reports.

CBSSports.com reports that Jacobs signed with the then-WWF in 1995 and would go on to became the wildly popular Kane, the deranged younger brother of The Undertaker. The two would go on to form an on-and-off duo as “The Brothers of Destruction.”

Jacobs’ last appearance in the ring came this June during the middle of his mayoral campaign.