WWE Comes to the US Open w/ Daniil Medvedev playing the Tennis Heel role

Pro Wrestling has come to The US Open:

Places listening - Australia in 2nd place, followed by Brazil, UK, Mexico, Vietnam, amongst others.

#1 City this week, Gosnells Australia which is a suburb of Perth out there in Western Australia.

The introductions of the players on the main court — they now dim the lights and play music when players come out

Star Singles players are now pairing up for doubles and playing before sellout crowds - like Tag Teams

Andy Murray is playing - Coco Gauff is teamed with Katie McNally - they’re 15 and 17 respectively

Kristie Ahn is a local kid born 2 miles away in Flushing hospital. This is storybook stuff.

Naomi Osaka brought Coco out for post match interview - going for the Tear Jerking moment on live TV - whether spontaneous or planned - it was both authentic and made for TV.

Djokovic gets booed because he has to withdraw from the match against Stan Wawrinka. “Joker” is in the midst of a run in which he’s won 4 of the past 5 majors and injury bug finally catches him.

People Booed because they wanted a longer match — but he handled it great.

13th mid-match retirement for Djokovic, 6th in a major

Now openly stating his goal to break Federer’s record - this has got to be killing him.

Stan Wawrinka seeded 23 - finally seeded again after a few rough years of injuries. Two knee surgeries. He’s just 6-19 against Joker but has now won 2 in a row including when he won the US Open against Joker. Stan is a 3 time major champion and the crowd is going to be ALL IN on him in his next match.

Because Stan’s next match is against the guy who we’re actually here to talk about today.

#5 Seed, Daniil Medvedev of Russia. Perfect wrestling heel behavior. He was rude to a ball boy in public. He gave a thinly veiled middle finger during his 3rd round match.

Crowd started booing him and in his post match press conference.

He basically went all Ravishing Rick Rude on them.

Told them in a very sarcastic / mocking tone that the energy they gave him motivated him to keep pushing, and that if they keep that same level of energy for him, he’d have enough energy to win 5 more matches and take the title.

He followed that up against a German Qualifier, Dominik Koepfer, who played at Tulane. Crowd was literally chanting “Let’s Go Koepfer” in unison like it was a Yankees Game.

He got down a set - and then came back to win the match in 4 sets. He again mocked the crowd in sarcastic fashion and essentially is “DRINKING IN THE BOOS”.

But. this is genius. The guy is #5 seed in tournament and nobody outside of tennis circles knew him or was talking about him before this. In a world in which everybody is talking about the Big Three and Serena… he’s a top five player in the world toiling in anonymity.

My take is, he’s seen how much attention Nick Kygrios (sp?) gets for his antics, and he’s like - I’m way more consistent than that guy - I’m as good as pretty much anybody. If they won’t love me, and if they won’t acknowledge me as a really good player… i’m going to brand myself as the heel.

And that’s working this week. The interesting part will be if he embraces this long-term and how that plays out if he does.

Luke warm take - if he wins the US Open - I bet the President congratulates him on twitter, and might even invite Medvedev to White House.

But Stan Wawrinka looks like he’s all the way back - so we’ll see if he even gets to the Quarterfinals. NYC loves a hero, but they also love a villain.

Last thing, How about Nadal and Federer have never met each other in the US Open ever, in any round of the tournament.