In Mexico, wrestler enjoys drawing boos with Trump flag

American loves being target of hostile crowds.

MEXICO CITY — He’s the guy Mexicans love to hate: An American pro wrestler has become a sensation in Mexico City by adopting the ring persona of a flamboyant Donald Trump supporter.

Sam Polinsky, aka Sam Adonis, revels in being a target for “luche libre” fans who use him as a stand-in for the new U.S. president, whose pledges to step up deportations, build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and lure jobs back to the U.S. have earned the anger of Mexicans like no president before.

The crowd at the capital’s Arena Mexico erupts in screams, boos, jeers and sarcastic whistling when Adonis appears wearing a Trump-esque orange tan, his blond locks streaming from a head band and waving an American flag emblazoned with a photo of Trump.

“Out! Out!” the crowd screams.

The native of Pittsburgh came to Mexico last year and the Trump campaign gave him the unparalleled chance to play the ultimate ring villain.

“Right now, I would be considered by the Mexican public as the most malicious bad guy they have,” Polinsky said with a smile before a match that — spoiler alert — he predictably lost.

Polinsky is happy to endure the boos in pro wrestling’s high-camp show of good vs. evil — and Mexico’s “luche libre” has the added long tradition of foreign villains.

“I’m very proud of the fact that I am able to evoke a genuine hatred, a genuine hate which is generally lost in professional wrestling due to the fact that most people realize that it is what it is — it’s more along the lines of a show,” Polinsky said.

There is little doubt he gets a rise out of the crowd.

Wrestling fan Gerardo Romero was among those booing Sam Adonis.

“There is a lot of ill will for Trump’s character, and because of that every time they hit him, we enjoy it,” Romero said.

But it’s all about the show, as Trump himself knew during his involvement with U.S. pro wrestling in the 1990s and 2000s.

“It’s no different than Spiderman or Batman. You need a very, very bad villain in order to invoke the sympathy for the hero,” Polinsky said. “As I see it, the more malicious, the more evil I can be for the Mexican public, the happier the Mexican public are when they see their Mexican heroes destroy the enemy.”

Which is just what happens, of course.