Remembering WWE's Smackdown Your Vote

Politics and wrestling have a long history of mixing together. Whether it's former WWE color commentator and Hall of Famer Jesse "The Body" Ventura running and subsequently becoming Governor of Minnesota (he ran as a member of the Reform Party), or The Rock speaking at the 2000 Republican National Convention, and even Hollywood Hulk Hogan pulling a publicity stunt announcing his running for the Presidency of the United States. Hogan even said he'd love to be Donald Trump's running mate earlier this year.

It's all there.

There have been mock fights with impersonators such as back in 2008 between nominees Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Or Cryme Tyme facing off against "President Bush.

Though, the actual candidates have shown up and essentially cut promos ("Can you smell what Barack is cooking?" is still golden) and get the WWE fans excited about their right to vote. You also have President Obama having a pre-recorded speech about how grateful he is about those that serve and have served. Only WWE can really do all of this.

Back in 2000, Linda McMahon founded WWE's Smackdown The Vote initiative, which was a non-partisan voter registration campaign. It was designed to specifically target the 18-30 voter demographic. The first year of the campaign had various superstars going around the country and talking to campuses and other places about voting and how it's your civil right and liberty to do so. It registered 150,000 new voters the first year, and eventually in 2008 partnered up with AT&T so you had a number one could text that would assist you in getting to register to vote.

It was that simple. Now, it's interesting to note that the Facebook page for Smackdown Your Vote hasn't been updated since 2010. On their own site, it's the same picture but has information of where you could register to vote at actual WWE live events back in August of 2010.

So what exactly happened? It could be a few things, but a lot of speculation goes to the fact that WWE Chairman Vince McMahon has a long-standing relationship with the GOP candidate who is also in the WWE Hall of Fame. We talked about reports that McMahon has put a gag order on past and present superstars talking about Trump in any way.

Could WWE bring this back for the next election cycle? The results are there so it's unclear why they wouldn't and it's a social platform that affects all of Americans. It will be interesting to see what they will do going forward with this, but as good ole JR liked to say, this has unlimited potential.