Donald Trump vs Vince McMahon – remembering WWE’s most famous ever Hair vs Hair match
This Sunday, Sonya Deville and Mandy Rose will contest a Hair vs Hair match at SummerSlam.
The object of the match is to simply win it like any normal match, but when you win you earn the right to shave your opponent bald.
Sonya Deville and Mandy Rose have a big time match this Sunday at SummerSlam where one will end up bald
WWE has had a fair few of these matches down the years, although they are rare.
Chris Jericho took away Kevin Nash’s luscious locks in 2003. Molly Holly lost her hair to Victoria at WrestleMania 20. Kurt Angle lost his admittedly receding hair to Edge in 2002, but there is one hair match more famous than the rest.
Donald Trump vs Vince McMahon.
Yes, in 2007, the future President of the United States went to war with Vince McMahon and at WrestleMania 23, both men put their hair on the line.
The feud started when WWE – for some reason – promoted a confrontation between real life rivals Trump and Rosie O’Donnell.
WWE delivered imposters portraying the two instead and fans roundly booed the segment. Although, Trump was declared the winner.
Vince McMahon and Donald Trump are close friends
Several weeks later during ‘fan appreciation night’ Trump interrupted McMahon’s promo to drop large sums of money into the arena.
From there, the ‘Battle of the Billionaires’ began and each opulent competitor would pick one superstar to represent them at WrestleMania 23.
Whoever’s star gave them the vicarious win would earn the right to shave the other bald. With Trump’s famous hair, it was hard to imagine that he might go all the way and let it be shaved off.
The competitors were Bobby Lashley for Trump – a gargantuan, muscular man – and Umaga represented McMahon – a tough, big Samoan.
To be fair, the idea gained a lot of mainstream media attention. WrestleMania 23 would become the highest grossing pay-per-view in WWE at that time $5.38 million earned in ticket sales and a further 1.21 million pay-per-view buys.
It is also, still to this day, the fourth highest attended WrestleMania of all-time.
Donald Trump chose to be represented by Bobby Lashley against Vince McMahon and the WWE boss chose Umaga
80,103 people were packed into Detroit’s Ford Field that were lucky enough to witness McMahon getting his head shaved completely bald.
The match itself was fairly rudimentary. Umaga and Lashley went at it hammer and tongs with Umaga, the heel, having the upper hand for the majority.
Trump and McMahon flanked their stars on the outside of the ring and McMahon was at his usual, animated best. Trump looked fairly uncomfortable, but he did muster some audible support for Lashley whenever the cameras were close.
Stone Cold Steve Austin served as the special guest referee for this match and, eventually, Umaga would attack the WWE legend.
That provided an opening for Shane McMahon to hit the ring, throw some jabs and nail his patented coast-to-coast before revealing a referee shirt.
Donald Trump was victorious in his battle with Vince McMahon and they created a real WrestleMania moment
Austin would re-emerge and take down Shane, but Umaga would knock the Texas Rattlesnake down again.
In amongst the chaos, Trump nailed McMahon with a closeline (of sorts) and that allowed Austin to hit the Stunner on Umaga, Lashley to hit the Samoan with a Spear and give Trump the victory. The crowd was going crazy.
After the match, Austin would hit Trump with a stunner and he explained on his podcast how the current U.S. President was all for it.
“So all of a sudden Vince comes to me and straight up this is the way it happened.
“We’re in the back area. 90,000 people out there Ford Field and he goes ‘Steve come over here. I’m gonna see if I can get Trump take a stunner’. I said, ‘Aw bull shit’. I said, ‘ You think he will?’ He goes, ‘I know Donald he’ll he’ll do it.’
“So he says ‘Donald, Come over here’ and he goes, ‘Steve this is Donald Trump.’ ‘Hey, Mr. Trump. How are you doing?’ And I met him. He goes ‘Listen I was thinking about after everything is all said and done. Steve would hit you with his finished move.’
‘Well what is it?’ ‘Well it’s called a stunner and it kind of goes like this.
“And Donald Trump’s right hand guy all of a sudden goes, ‘Oh no no no no you don’t need to do that there’s a million reasons why you shouldn’t do that. And here’s why.’ But Donald asked Vince ‘You think it’ll help the show?’ He goes ‘Oh Donald they’ll go crazy.’ So Donald Trump was was man enough to go out there and, we botched it,” Austin said.
In spite of the failed move, the match lives on in infamy.
Now Rose and Deville – only the second women to ever contest this type of match in WWE – have their chance to do the same.
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