Wrestlemania 23: Battle of the Billionaires

Submission 12,512

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About

The Battle of Billionaires was the name of the main staged rivalry between Donald Trump and Vince McMahon at the 23rd annual Wrestlemania pay-per-view event that took place in April 2007. While the event drew large-scale interest in its own right at the time of the original airing, numerous GIFs and video clips from the staged altercation between the two has seen a notable resurgence since Donald Trump's nomination, and subsequent victory, in the 2016 United States presidential election.

Background

The event was organized in collaboration among several federations in professional wrestling, featuring performers from Raw, SmackDown!, and ECW brands, as a joint pay-per-view (PPV) event, which took place on April 1st, 2007 at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan. On July 19th, 2011, the highlights clip of the match between was uploaded by WWE to its YouTube channel.

Developments

In the months leading up to the match in April 2007, the polygonal WrestleMania event became widely discussed on professional wrestling communities, such as the official WWE website^[3], Online World of Wrestling^[2], Just Jared^[8] and Wrestling Inc.^[1], as well as numerous entertainment news sites, including IGN News^[4], TMZ^[6], FOX News^[9], USA Today^[11] and People Magazine.^[10]

Reception

Upon the premiere of Wrestlemania 23, it was met with record-breaking commercial success and generally positive reviews from the fans and critics alike. In total, Wrestlemania 23 drew an audience of 80,103 fans and approximately 1.2 million viewers at home, while grossing $5.38 million USD in ticket sales. The event set a new record for the highest WWE pay-per-view buyrate in franchise history, before it was eventually surpassed by WrestleMania XXVIII in 2012. In addition, the "Battle of the Billionaires" match was rated an 8 out of 10 stars.

2016 Presidential Campaign

During the first half of 2015, nearly a decade after the "Battle of the Billionaires" took place, various video clips and GIFs of Donald Trump's featured appearance in WrestleMania 23 saw a notable resurgence in circulation in the news and on social media, as rumors began spreading that the reality TV star and vocal critic of Barack Obama is considering to run in the 2016 United States presidential election.

President Trump's Anti-CNN Tweet

On June 28th, 2017, Redditor HanAssholeSolo submitted a photoshopped GIF of Trump ambushing and battering McMahon by the ringside, with a logo of CNN superimposed over the face of McMahon, to the /r/The_Donald subreddit in a post titled "Trump Takes Down Fake News (Colorized, 2017)." A few days later, on July 1st, Donald Trump tweeted the same photoshopped GIF to his personal Twitter account, accompanied by the hashtags #FraudNewsCNN and #FNN. A moment afterwards, the GIF was also shared on his official @POTUS account.