Glenn Jacobs, who has wrestled as Kane in the WWE since 1997, will be the next Mayor of Knox County, Tennessee following Thursday’s race.
The Republican candidate declared victory Thursday evening over Democratic opponent Linda Haney with the early returns favoring Jacobs by a 2-to-1 margin.
Jacobs was nominated as the Republican candidate after this past May’s primary winning by a slim margin to set up the fall race for the vacated mayoral seat. Haney was considered a large underdog with the Knox County mayoral seat represented by the Republicans since 2002.
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Jacobs has been living in East Tennessee for the past 23 years and running an insurance and real estate company with his wife, Crystal.
As a pro wrestler, he began his career in 1992 and received his first notoriety with the USWA in the early 90’s working as Doomsday and the Christmas Creature. He later assumed the moniker of Unabomb working for Smokey Mountain Wrestling before heading to the World Wrestling Federation in 1995.
His first national exposure came as Dr. Isaac Yankem DDS, the evil personal dentist of Jerry Lawler, who feuded with Bret Hart and included a singles match at SummerSlam in Pittsburgh that year.
The character was a flop and shelved by mid-1996, Jacobs was repackaged, but not for the better. The next failed experiment saw Jacobs play the role of the “Fake Diesel” character, after teasing that Diesel and Razor Ramon would appear on Monday Night Raw, four months after Kevin Nash and Scott Hall had debuted for World Championship Wrestling. Jacobs and Rick Bogner assumed the characters in one of the promotion’s weakest concepts of the era.
The next character was his big hit with months of promos from Paul Bearer, teasing that The Undertaker had a secret brother that was burned in a fire. Jacobs was introduced at the October 1997 Badd Blood pay-per-view in St. Louis as “Kane” (which was the original name of The Undertaker’s character when he debuted in 1990), attacking The Undertaker and allowing Shawn Michaels to pin him in the first Hell in a Cell match.
The two were kept apart until WrestleMania 14 in March 1998 with The Undertaker defeating Kane but cementing his spot as a featured performer, who would begin a 21-year run as Kane.
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In June 1998, he won the WWF title from Steve Austin and held it for one night, dropping it on the following night’s edition of Raw in Cleveland.
The most absurd and outlandish storylines became reserved for Kane, who had an ability to embrace the absurd. Over the years he electrocuted the testicles of Shane McMahon, lit Jim Ross on fire, claimed ownership of Lita’s “demon seed”, and was the punchline for Triple H’s necrophilia scene in 2002 among his character’s plotlines.
While his schedule has reduced significantly, he still worked throughout 2018 while his campaign was ongoing. This included the Extreme Rules event in July, where he was hampered by a legitimate foot injury in his tag match with Daniel Bryan against The Bludgeon Brothers.
