Dude somehow parlayed a middling record as a kickboxer into a gig as a small-time heel on British reality TV, and from there captured the minds of a generation of budding dudebros with a mix of sociopathic grindset machismo and shocking amounts of misogyny. Some of that had to be charisma, but frankly I think a lot of it is the same thing that makes Trump so appealing to a certain demographic: he tells them it’s okay to be a bad guy, because bad guys win at life and everybody else are just chumps.