WWE Hall Of Famer Didn’t Want KofiMania To Happen
KofiMania rocked the wrestling world in 2019 as Kofi Kingston won the WWE Championship at WrestleMania but one Hall of Famer was against it happening.
Kofi Kingston’s rise to the top of WWE began at Elimination Chamber 2019 as the crowd rallied behind the star to win the match and the WWE Title. But Daniel Bryan won that night and in a repeat of the storyline that saw Bryan rise to the top of the company in 2014, he decided Kingston was a “B+ player” and not worthy of challenging for his title at WrestleMania 35.
Vince McMahon agreed and put Kingston through the wringer to get his match. His New Day partners Xavier Woods and Big E had to win a gauntlet match to finally guarantee Kingston his shot at the gold.
At WrestleMania 35, KofiMania ran wild as Kofi Kingston won the WWE Championship for the first and only time in his illustrious career.
But it wasn’t just Daniel Bryan and Vince McMahon who didn’t want Kingston to win the big prize.
Speaking to Chris Van Vliet, new SmackDown co-lead writer Road Dogg explained why he didn’t want KofiMania to happen as he thought Big E should be the man to win the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 35:
I’ll tell you this, and I’d love to have a conversation with you about it. It worked out exactly how it was supposed to work out, but I was wrong. I wanted Big E to win the title at Kofi Mania. I thought Big E was the guy, and a guy on my writing team who now writes for NXT said, ‘You’re wrong boss. You’re wrong. It’s Kofi.’
And I didn’t realize that Kofi had such a personal connection with the fan base. I was just looking for who’s the next guy and I didn’t think oh, the guy’s sitting right here. I was trying to make this guy over here and, yeah, never been so happy to be wrong though. What a moment.
Nobody Can Take Kofi Kingston’s Crowning WWE Moment Away
Road Dogg noted that people can complain about how Kingston lost his title – in 7 seconds to Brock Lesnar – but nobody can take that moment away and he’s so happy he was wrong:
You can go back in time and fuss about what happened the next week or the next year or whatever. Who cares? Kofi won the title at WrestleMania, and nobody can ever take that away. [Big E had his moment.] It was gonna come around, just it wasn’t time yet. I
saw something that was there, it just wasn’t time yet. The timing was Kofi. It was Kofi’s time and have I never been so happy to be wrong and couldn’t be more happy for the guy it happened for too. If I was writing again, we’d do it one more time, because I think it would work again. I 100% think it would work again.
It’s hard to imagine that Kofi Kingston would ever have the fans behind him ever again after The New Day sickeningly turned their back on Big E over two years after he broke his neck leaving him unable to return to the ring.