There may be no greater heel in the NBA than Knicks big man Enes Kanter. The center out of Turkey is a talented scorer and rebounder, but he also has a special knack for playing the villain. Look at his Twitter account. If he’s not trading barbs with fans he’s talking crap about other players. He infamously feuded with LeBron James last season in New York. Kanter loves to play the bad guy.
He’s so good at it that it makes him seem like a wrestling villain. Perhaps that fantasy could become reality in the future. The Athletic recently wrote a feature on Kanter and his love of wrestling. Lots of NBA players are big fans of the WWE, but few could also play the part in it. Kanter could. He even has an in. Paul Heyman, a wrestling legend and the current “advocate” of Brock Lesnar in WWE, is great friends with Kanter and he wants him wrestling once Kanter’s NBA career is over.
“I would suggest that I am not only a friend of Enes Kanter, that I am not only a fan of Enes Kanter — both as a fan and even more as a human being — I am happy to advocate on behalf of Enes Kanter on a moment’s notice on any subject for which he would like to exploit his advocacy,” Heyman said.
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Heyman, he says, has told him that when Kanter is done with the NBA he wants him to move into pro wrestling and Kanter thinks he’s serious.
“I would hope that he shall take my guidance and be more than just a wrestler,” Heyman said. “I would hope that Enes would want to be a WrestleMania main eventer because I don’t see why a person who came in and has become the most talked about New York Knick in years would aspire to be anything less than that.”
Kanter’s personality would fit right into the world of WWE, the only question would be how he would do physically in the ring. He certainly has experience flopping and selling contact, and athletes naturally know how to fall, but there’s more to it than that. Kanter would need to learn how to move around the ring, sell action, and perform his own offensive move set.
None of this is impossible of course. The NBA is full of some of the greatest athletes in the world. There’s no reason to believe that Kanter can’t handle a transition to the WWE. Who knows, maybe he retires in a few years, commits to training full-time, and then makes his WWE debut. He wouldn’t be the first pro athlete turned pro wrestler and he probably wouldn’t be the last. The real question is how many shots per promo does he take at LeBron James? Putting the Over/Under here at 2.5.
