By the time Sam Adonis strutted into Mexico waving a four-foot American flag with Donald Trump’s face airbrushed on it, he had already discovered the ultimate wrestling cheat code: outrage sells. It didn’t matter that the man behind the gimmick, Samuel Elias Polinsky, was about as politically active as a folding chair—he understood what made lucha libre tick: national pride, masked heroes, and, most of all, villains so despicable they made you throw your beer at your own television.
So, he gave them exactly that.
And for a brief, beautiful, utterly bonkers moment, Sam Adonis was the most hated man in Mexico.
The Pittsburgh Kid With a Passport
Born in 1989 into the house of Polinsky in Pittsburgh, Sam was wrestling royalty—or at least local indie circuit nobility. His father, Dan Polinsky, promoted shows in the Steel City. His older brother Matthew would go on to WWE fame as tattooed talking head Corey Graves, a man with more neck ink than judgment.
Sam, meanwhile, was a different breed. Trained by his brother and forged in the fires of VFW halls and high school gyms, he debuted in 2008 as Samuel Elias, often tagging with Graves before Graves traded suplexes for soundbites. For a while, Sam bounced around Pennsylvania promotions winning tag titles and local belts with names like “Ches-A-Rena Champion,” which sounds more like a seafood restaurant than a wrestling title.
But make no mistake—Sam was built for more than bingo hall brawls. The man had charisma, height, and hair you could style with a leaf blower. If Ric Flair and an American Apparel model had a kid, you’d get Sam Adonis. He just needed a gimmick with heat.
Buddy Stretcher and Bill Callous: The Detours
In 2011, WWE took a brief sniff, repackaging him as Buddy Stretcher in Florida Championship Wrestling. Sadly, Buddy’s career was stretchered out after two matches and one knee injury. From there came the independent hustle: Europe, the UK, Germany, Italy. A passport full of stamps, but no spotlight.
While working for All Star Wrestling in the UK, he started finding his groove as “Sam Adonis,” a narcissistic pretty boy with enough bravado to fill Wembley. But it wasn’t until he hit Mexico that the spotlight turned into a heat lamp and Sam Adonis became the ultimate export in American arrogance.
Make Lucha Libre Hate Again
In 2016, Sam landed in Mexico and pitched a gimmick so nuclear it should’ve required a warning label: a bleach-blond American waving the Trump flag—in Mexico. This wasn’t just heat. This was fission-level rage bait.
Wrestling for CMLL, Mexico’s premier lucha promotion, Adonis strutted to the ring like a MAGA peacock, draped in Old Glory and taunting the crowd in Spanish. His tights? Trump’s mug, painted across his ass, like Rick Rude had wandered into Fox News. It was part politics, part performance art, and entirely combustible.
“I don’t support Trump,” Sam would clarify in interviews, “but I respect that he’s himself.” Translation: Please don’t burn my house down.
But Mexicans didn’t care for nuance. Sam Adonis had spit on their flag, insulted their national identity, and committed the cardinal sin of removing Último Dragón’s mask—a wrestling crime on par with defiling the Pope’s hat. The crowd response? Boiling hate. Boos loud enough to register on the Richter scale. A Molotov cocktail of kayfabe and cultural anxiety.
And Sam? He basked in it like a sunburned Bond villain in Cancun.
Lucha Libre’s Lex Luthor
What made Adonis special wasn’t just the gimmick—it was that he could go. Despite looking like a cartoon of white privilege, he could wrestle with the best of them. He blended old-school bumping with lucha flourishes, mixing ring psychology with cultural insult like some kind of bigoted Ric Flair on a student visa.
He teamed with Okumura and Johnny Idol, creating a foreign heel faction so toxic it made America’s State Department nervous. And yet, as much as he insulted the crowd, he also elevated the shows. His matches mattered. His heat wasn’t cheap—it was volcanic. Sam wasn’t just a clown. He was their clown.
Politics as Performance
When American outlets caught wind of the “Pro-Trump Wrestler Getting Booed in Mexico,” Sam became a novelty news item, the kind your aunt shares on Facebook thinking it’s real. “Is he serious?” they asked. But Sam’s genius lay in ambiguity. He wasn’t serious—but he could be. That doubt is what made it tick.
He was like wrestling’s Andy Kaufman, if Kaufman had traded in intergender matches for immigration taunts.
Behind the curtain, Sam was dating a Mexican woman, working the indies, and attending Lucha Libre BBQs with the very fans hurling beer cans at his head. The heat was real—but it was also real business.
From CMLL to the World
By 2018, the act had run its course in CMLL. You can only set fire to the flag so many times before the fire department shows up. Adonis parted ways with the promotion but stayed busy. He worked for Toryumon, IWRG, DTU, and AAA, cementing himself as a global heat magnet.
In 2017, he even wrestled at Ultimo Dragon’s 30th Anniversary show in Japan, where he did the unthinkable—ripped off Ultimo’s mask. In Japan. That’s like dropkicking Santa in a Macy’s window.
He’d also show up on MLW, losing to Jacob Fatu—who, in a wonderful wrestling subplot, was dating Sam’s now-ex-girlfriend at the time. That’s either poetic justice or a Jerry Springer episode with suplexes.
The Man Behind the Flag
Despite the firestorm, Sam Adonis is soft-spoken in interviews. He distances himself from the politics but understands the power of controversy.
“You don’t have to believe it,” he said. “You just have to sell it.”
He’s no dummy. Sam is part old-school carny, part global citizen. He’s lived in England, wrestled in Japan, hustled in Pittsburgh, and burned down arenas in Mexico with a gimmick that walked the razor-thin line between satire and sin.
What’s next? More international bookings. More trolling. Maybe a WWE return if they ever decide they need a MAGA heel who can actually bump. But for now, Sam Adonis remains pro wrestling’s most confusing export: a guy you want to hate, even when you’re not sure you should.
Curtain Call
In a world where kayfabe is dead and most wrestlers are just CrossFit guys with entrance music, Sam Adonis is a throwback: a heat-seeker, a showman, a flag-waving provocateur with a perfectly curled smirk and the guts to get booed in every language.
And the most hated man in Mexico?
He made them love to hate him.
That’s wrestling, baby.