Vince McMahon and Donald Trump were on NBC’s Today this morning, showing off the WWE boss’ newly-shaved head, live from outside the show’s studio.
At the top of the 8am hour, Al Roker and the rest of the crew joked around about Wrestlemania (Matt Lauer: “I missed it — it’s on my TiVo!”) and promoted that either Trump or McMahon is now bald, and will be on later in the show. They showed clips of Trump pushing Vince into a desk from RAW and then Trump clotheslining Vince from last night.
At around 8:30, they had both men on, with Vince wearing a Wrestlemania cap. They took the hat off, and showed off Vince’s bald head and a bit of a black eye. Trump said they’re friends again now, and that this all came about when Vince called him up and made a challenge, after which they each picked a wrestler to face off, and Vince’s guy lost. They showed footage from last night of Trump, Lashley and Austin shaving off Vince’s hair, and asked McMahon how it felt. “It’s sort of humiliating, kinda like, ya know, I mean you’re not supposed to want to do something like this. I gotta tell ya, in terms of entertainment, the audience loved it, it was entertaining, Donald Trump is a great entertainer in addition to everything else.”
They talk about the Ford Field attendance record, and then after showing a composite of what Trump would look like if HE lost (which the crowd cheered), they asked what he says to the audience that wanted to see him bald. Trump shows off that it’s his real hair, and says that “maybe we’ll have a rematch” and Vince says “we’ll see.”
Matt Lauer says Vince could break Trump in half, but Vince no-sells it as Trump tells Matt “I’ll break YOU in half.” Matt jokingly suggests that match for Wrestlemnaia 24 and Vince laughs it off, while he secretly starts trying to figure out ways to make that actually happen.
They then show a “before/after” picture with the left side of the screen being Vince with hair, and the right side of the screen being Al Roker, who says “it’s very freeing; you’ll get used to it.” Vince laughs and gives Al a WWE hat. Always the promoter…
Overall it was a good segment, and a fun one, and I think it’s safe to say this was one of the most successful mainstream cross-overs in Wrestlemania history (if not all of wrestling), with coverage by the Associated Press, on E!, etc. Of course the Detroit papers kept up the coverage, including in the Free Press and News.
