Make that Mayor Kane: WWE wrestler Glenn Jacobs wins Tennessee political race

 Glenn “Kane” Jacobs, the new mayor of Knox County, Tenn. (Caitie McMekin/Knoxville News Sentinel via AP)

Glenn Jacobs said Thursday night that he would prefer not to use pro-wrestling analogies during his campaign for mayor of Knox County, Tenn. But after the man better known as WWE wrestler Kane soundly defeated his Democratic opponent at the polls, he gladly crammed a few of them into his remarks.

“This professional wrestler got into a no-holds-barred, last-man-standing match, and when the bell rung, he was victorious,” Jacobs told supporters at his watch party, per the Knoxville News Sentinel. “We were victorious.”

Jacobs, a Republican who leans libertarian, thumped Democrat Linda Haney by 32 percentage points in the race for mayor, which in Knox County is akin to county executive. It was a far more convincing win than in May’s Republican primary, when Jacobs defeated Knox County Commissioner Brad Anders by a mere 23 votes.

The 6-foot-8, 300-pound Jacobs first appeared in what was then called the World Wrestling Federation in 1995 as a character called Isaac Yankem, DDS, before he eventually was given a new persona: Kane, the masked half brother of the Undertaker. He eventually would capture nearly every significant WWE belt and still is active in the ring: According to PWInsider.com, he suffered a legitimate Achilles’ tendon injury in July during a taping of “WWE SmackDown.” Haney criticized Jacobs for continuing his wrestling career during the race, with Jacobs countering that he was just doing his job, according to the News Sentinel.

Jacobs also co-owns an insurance and real estate company with his wife in Knox County, where he’s lived for the past four years. He has written numerous blog posts on LewRockwell.com, a libertarian website, inveighing against the National Security Agency and bitcoin, but he kept his pledges vague during the campaign, promising not to raise taxes but otherwise not offering much in the way of specifics for voters in Knox County, which skews heavily Republican. Donald Trump defeated Hilary Clinton there by nearly 24 percentage points in the 2016 presidential election, and the county last broke for a Democratic presidential candidate in 1940.

Jacobs will take office on Sept. 1.