HARTFORD - Linda McMahon never showed up.
More than 15,000 cheering fans arrived at the XL Center in Hartford on Saturday as World Wrestling Entertainment hosted Fan Appreciation Day to thank the fans for continuing to support professional wrestling in spite of criticisms of McMahon during the past year.
McMahon has spent more than $45 million of her own money in her long quest for the U.S. Senate seat against Republican primary opponents and in Tuesday's election against Democrat Richard Blumenthal. Her high-profile husband, Vince, has become more outspoken in the race recently, and he scheduled the fan appreciation day on the Saturday before the election.
One hour into the three-hour show, Vince McMahon stepped into the ring and addressed the hard-core fans.
"Some people may think I was going to talk about politics today,'' McMahon told the crowd. "Nothing could be further from the truth. I do encourage you to vote this Tuesday, and while you're voting, feel free to wear a WWE T-shirt.''
"I came out here to simply say thank you,'' he said. "That's what this day is all about. It's about fan appreciation. No one appreciates the fans more than World Wrestling Entertainment.''
WWE, McMahon said, has been subject to "out and out lies by some politicians'' and "subject to distortion, equivocation by some members of the media'' during the U.S. Senate campaign. Stories have been written about the deaths of various wrestlers, as well as complaints about steroid use in the sport.
Linda McMahon's campaign had originally said that she would attend Saturday's show, but she did not. When asked for the reason why she did not attend, campaign spokesman Ed Patru said, "We purposely had a fluid schedule to allow her flexibility. Linda can't be in two places at one time. She'd like to be.''
On Saturday, she was in Westport, Southport, Stamford, Greenwich, and Danbury.
The WWE show - in the 15,000-seat arena - came on the same afternoon as a massive rally in Brideport in The Arena at Harbor Yard as President Barack Obama hosted hard-core Democrats and urged them to vote on Tuesday in the same way that McMahon urged them to vote.
A random sampling of fans at the XL Center showed widespread support for Linda McMahon amid a nasty campaign of television commercials and criticism of violence and the treatment of women in professional wrestling.
"They're attacking her family business, which is not really fair,'' said 24-year-old Shannon Thurston of Vernon, who has watched wrestling with her father virtually her entire life. "She's not going after Blumenthal's family.''
Thurston criticized the Blumenthal campaign for paying for the father of former wrestler Chris Benoit to fly to Hartford to talk about his son's suicide after killing his family members.
"It was his son who killed his family, not Linda McMahon,'' Thurston said.
Middletown resident Bob Jacobsen, who has lived in Connecticut for 27 of his 30 years, said he did not know much about Blumenthal. But he did know that he is voting for McMahon.
"I definitely think it's wrong they take wrestling in a negative light,'' said Jacobsen, who was wearing a baseball cap. "There's a lot of good they do, like charity work.''