Media personality Jason Whitlock doesn’t see Pat McAfee being the next Sylvester Stallone. He compared McAfee to another Hollywood heavyweight with a WWE background: The Rock.
According to Bloomberg, football analyst and WWE commentator Pat McAfee will star alongside Sylvester Stallone in Tulsa King. He has a four-episode arc in the upcoming fourth season of the Paramount+ series. The report states that Ari Emanuel, the Executive Chairman of TKO Group Holdings and WME Group, is reportedly “trying to turn Pat McAfee into the next Sylvester Stallone.” Emanuel added McAfee to his client list and started booking him in films and TV roles.
Whitlock reacted to the report about McAfee’s future in Hollywood and said that he believes McAfee has more in common with The Rock than Stallone. However, those on Emanuel and Johnson’s side don’t want to label it as such due to the latter still being in his prime as a media attraction.
“ESPN has a masculinity crisis, and Pat McAfee fills that void. His association with the WWE, his association with College GameDay and his loose association with the UFC, he has branded himself as the manliest man at ESPN. And even though that bar has been lowered, even though that’s not a high bar to jump over, it’s an important one for ESPN because Disney has so feminized ESPN and sports,” Whitlock said.
Whitlock says pushing McAfee into that “masculinity” role shows the audience that ESPN can still appeal to a wider audience. He added that McAfee might be pursuing Hollywood fame, but his de facto rival at ESPN, Stephen A. Smith, is chasing Hollywood (or political) power.
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