Trump in the Circle: Wrestling and the battle for American masculinity

The Guardian

16-04-2025

Every March, I tune in to the NCAA Division I Men's Wrestling Championships, a ritual I associate with the arrival of spring. It also reminds me of my own athletic tenure. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and started wrestling when I was five, and went on to compete at the Division I level in college.
This year's championships were compulsive viewing. Penn State's Carter Starocci became the first five-time D-I national champion, and Oklahoma State's Wyatt Hendrickson stunned Olympic champion, Gable Steveson, in the heavyweight final. Oh. And Donald Trump was there. Joining him were Elon Musk, former wrestler turned Republican Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, and other political allies.
Trump made his entrance in Philadelphia's Wells Fargo Center to cheers and 'U-S-A, U-S-A' chants. He appeared after Starocci had just claimed his historic fifth title, prompting ESPN to interrupt Starocci's interview and cut to the president. As Trump waved to the crowd, I received a text from a former training partner – 'Dude, WTF' he wrote. I knew what he meant. I felt the same sinking disappointment.
Our sentiments, however, were not shared by many of the wrestlers at the tournament. Throughout the night, athletes shook hands with the president, posed with him for pictures and let him hold their NCAA trophies, obelisk-like totems that represent years of bloody sacrifice the uninitiated would be hard-pressed to fathom. On his X account, Tom Ryan, head coach at Ohio State, posted a picture of himself and Elon Musk, whom he called one of his 'favorite men'. Hendrickson celebrated his victory by firing a stout salute in Trump's direction and draping an American flag over his massive shoulders.
Two days after the tournament, Starocci joined Fox & Friends, and, despite his name being mispronounced multiple times, seemed happy to be there. Hendrickson appeared via video chat on America's Newsroom, where Fox anchor Bill Hemmer, like many others, called him 'Captain America'. Both interviews focused on wrestling and Trump in equal measure.
What do these athletes see in Trump? He is a wrestler's opposite in nearly every way. Though he has a weird habit of trying to dominate handshakes, he's never been a serious athlete, despite his boasts. His privilege has shielded him from accountability throughout his life. Among high-level wrestlers, personal accountability is a deep, almost spiritual core value. Most wrestlers never reach their athletic goals, regardless of how hard they work. I can attest that such failures are crushing. And yet, when it comes to losses, most wrestlers reject any form of excuse. Two years ago, in a bout considered one of the all-time college upsets, Matt Ramos of Purdue pinned Iowa superstar, Spencer Lee. Lee, who was injured, said in a Barstool interview, 'I saw people say I lost because I was hurt … That's not true. I got beat. I hate when people try to make excuses for me when I got outwrestled and beat.' Trump has yet to publicly concede his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
This paradox is not surprising. Many of Trump's fans voted for policies that will not benefit their lives. Their support is based on emotion, not logic. Viewed through this lens, college wrestling's embrace of Trump makes sense. Trump's antagonistic relationship with higher ed matters little when, to wrestling, he and his allies say, 'We love you, we're proud of you.'
For a sport routinely shoved to the margins, this high-profile support is significant. Penn State's Mitchell Mesenbrink said if 'you put politics aside, no matter if you're conservative or liberal … to have the president of the United States be at something we want to get people to watch … [is] really, really cool.' Wasted tax dollars notwithstanding, Mesenbrink is right. You seldom see wrestlers in a montage on Gatorade commercials. You don't hear about them inking huge corporate sponsorship deals. Simone Biles, Caitlin Clark and Michael Phelps are household names, yet a relatively small sect outside the wrestling world knows who Jordan Burroughs is. In 2016, The New Yorker published The Faces of College Wrestlers, which featured portraits taken after wrestlers had stepped off the mat. I was delighted until I read the article's comment section on Facebook. With articulate prose, people had reduced these young men to knuckle-dragging stereotypes. The phrase 'toxic masculinity' appeared multiple times.
Negative attention is nothing new for wrestling. Fifty years ago, there were more than 150 D-I wrestling programs; as of 2025, there are 79. My alma mater, Boston University, cut its program in 2014 to make space for men's lacrosse. To me, an elite urban school rejecting wrestling for a sport associated with affluence felt like a rejection of my home state, and, more broadly, of rural America.
Herein lies the other thread that tethers wrestling to Trump: while wrestling programs of all levels exist in various parts of the country, wrestling is largely associated with rural America. The urban-rural divide has continued to widen since Trump first entered the political arena. Many rural voters have voiced feelings of being unseen – or, if seen, of being scorned – by the political elite. Trump's policies do not improve life for most of his rural constituents – quite the opposite. Nonetheless, to these voters, Trump routinely says, I see you.
Democrats have struggled to find a language that engages rural America (a trend Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are trying to change). Similarly, many on the left have faltered when it comes to locating a productive language to discuss masculinity. Trump fills that void, hollow as his platitudes may be.
It took me three application cycles to gain admission to a fully funded MFA program. As rejections rolled in, I leaned on the persistence wrestling had instilled in me. My eventual acceptance letter filled me with as much joy as any win on the mat ever had. My first night on campus, an MFA colleague, referring to my identity as a straight white male, asked, 'How does it feel to be part of the problem?' The question portended a number of similar experiences. Phrases like 'toxic masculinity' and 'lit bro' were swung in my direction like a judge banging a gavel. In those moments, I wanted to turn translucent – to hold out my arms like a Da Vinci sketch and show the scar tissue and nerve damage and old surgeries and say, see?
In a guest essay for the New York Times, David J Morris laments the dearth of young men involved in the reading and writing of literature. He notes that this reality is reflected in our national politics. 'Young men who still exhibit curiosity about the world,' he writes, 'Too often seek intellectual stimulation through figures of the 'manosphere' such as Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan.'
Morris points out a number of discouraging trends. Suicide rates among young men have skyrocketed while educational statistics continue to plummet. Young men who exhibit 'traditional' masculine qualities, such as physical strength and self-reliance, are labeled 'toxic' by a culture that will just as quickly make male vulnerability the punchline of a joke. Last year, a study conducted at Dublin City University by Dr Catherine Baker, professor Debbie Ging, and Dr Maja Brandt Andreasen uncovered the alarming extent to which algorithms used by social media platforms recommend misogynistic content to young men. A 2023 study conducted by the Pew Research Center found that young men are reaching financial milestones at a slower rate than men of previous generations, while numbers among women swing in the opposite direction.
Leading up to the election, Trump took pains to forge an associative link between young men's economic woes and progressive politics; his racist and misogynistic attacks on Kamala Harris fed into a prevailing sense of anger and dissatisfaction. The irony, of course, is that Trump has a long history of relying on immigrant labor and stiffing the working class. On 13 July 2024, the attempt on Trump's life at a rally in Pennsylvania further solidified his tough-guy image. AP photographer Evan Vucci captured a photo of Trump pumping his fist like a victorious athlete as blood dripped from his ear. (Celebrations of Trump's temerity tended to ignore the fact that audience member Corey Comperatore was killed.) The president also has a strong relationship with the UFC. Last Saturday, he attended UFC 314 in Miami. For fight fans, chaos-inducing trade policies are trivial when Trump – like a Roman emperor at the Colosseum – sits among the people for a dose of cathartic violence. Is it thus surprising that Trump made significant gains among young men of all backgrounds in last year's presidential election?
Wrestling is hard, and those who excel at it deserve to be celebrated. It teaches young people how to hold themselves accountable and persevere through difficult challenges – skills that seem to be in short supply. Boys are not the lone beneficiaries. Girls' wrestling is America's fastest growing high school sport. While many figures of the 'manosphere' champion physical fitness, the wholesale conflation of fitness and toxic masculinity is a mistake. Wrestling, like any sport, has its bad actors. Still, no one benefits when those who promote inclusiveness take it upon themselves to define masculinity with narrow parameters that shame a large number of young men. Shame drives these young men toward the praise of a hypocritical false idol, and, worse, toward 'manosphere' extremism.
Perhaps the wrestling world's embrace of Trump is a metonym for our historical moment. How to positively reengage young men is the question with which America must grapple if it is going to wrest democracy from the jaws of defeat. The whistle has already been blown; the match is underway.