FORMER WWE WRESTLER Kane has been elected as the mayor of his hometown in Knoxville.

Glenn Jacobs runs an insurance and real estate company and was leading Democrat Linda Haney by a large margin with most of the votes counted.

The Knoxville News Sentinel reports Jacobs claimed victory at his watch party. He said some politicians responded with “pretty resounding laughter” when he announced his decision to seek the top job in Tennessee’s third-largest county.

Jacobs said he doesn’t normally use wrestling analogies for campaigning.

“But this professional wrestler got into a no-holds-barred, last-man-standing match, and when the bell rung, he was victorious,” he said. “We were victorious.”

Jacobs won a close primary in May. Those results were delayed when the county’s election-reporting website crashed after a concerted cyberattack that experts deemed “malicious”.

County officials said no voting data was affected, the vulnerability was fixed, and additional safeguards were put in place.

Haney ran small businesses with her husband before she retired, and was considered an underdog in the solidly Republican county.