In 2012, Kofi Kingston created a tradition. Decked out in Edward Nygma-inspired gear, he’d popularize a trend of solving the impossible riddle: surviving Royal Rumble match elimination while being entirely separated from the ring. He would avoid The Miz’s attempted elimination by first recreating Shawn Michaels’ “hold onto the top rope after flipping over moment,” but Miz, cognizant of what was happening, caught Kingston mid-flip, sending him completely over the ropes. Undaunted, Kofi would handstand from ringside to the ringsteps, avoiding his feet touching the ground to keep his place in the match. Thus began an incredible string of espaces, instantly making Kingston one of the focal points of the match going forward. “Hey, it was John Morrison’s spot, not mine!” Kofi’s shrugs are as big as his smiles, both acknowledging his place in history while sharing it with his deserving peers. But before he plots out his next can’t-miss Royal Rumble moment, he’s championing new NXT talent Sol Ruca, who, like Kofi, has found an athletic, creative way to survive a battle royal. He not only defers to Morrison as the originator, but immediately jumps to the positives of the promising rookie. “She’s an amazing athlete… the guts… to go out there in front of a live crowd, and perform that”—“flipping inverted cutter” was the name he settled on for her finisher—“takes real guts.”
Kingston and longtime tag team partner Xavier Woods are were recently NXT tag team champions. Kingston, currently one of WWE’s longest tenured talents, admits to a bit of culture shock with the new crop of future stars. During a workout, Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth’s “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)” comes on a shuffled playlist. Kofi overhears Ashonte Adonis saying “I remember this song from [XBox/PlayStation 2 videogame) NFL Street!” and quickly explains to them that this used to stay on the radio. Educating the youth, both in speech and in action, has been a generational calling for Kingston, and now he’s looking to take that even further: he’s partnering with some of the best and brightest to bring the gift of modern technology to his home country of Ghana.
In 2013, Kofi Kingston was knocked off of the apron by Dolph Ziggler, but luckily landed on the back of Albert. After Albert spilled him onto the announce table, he convinced JBL to give up his chair, which he used to hop back toward the ring and reenter ring to massive applause. Throughout some of the biggest moments in Kofi’s career, things that started off as small gestures ended up providing huge payoffs. His next endeavor, CLICK for Quality Education Foundation, mirrors his career-spanning efforts, being at once both modest and ambitious. There’s a good chance that on your daily commute in America, you’ll pass four or five public libraries, two of which you’ve visited, the rest you’ve likely never seen. They all contain access to books, music, and the internet, all paid for from a few dollars out of your paycheck. Wyoming, a state with a population currently under 600,000, have over one hundred libraries. Ghana, with a population of 31 million, currently has 61 public libraries. Even then, the libraries are not densely populated with works from around the world, or computers with any question on your mind one click away. The very IDEA of a computer is something educators find themselves working hard to explain. As Kingston explains, “there's a lot of kids who have never had the experience of using a computer to the point where the teachers who are educating the students will take a rock and say, ‘hey, this is a mouse,’ and draw a screen on a table or on the ground or in some dirt or whatever and say, like ‘when you're moving the mouse, then the arrow is going to be moving and you can click.’ So it's very difficult to conceptualize that, even as I talk about it, to people who are very experienced with computers and things like that, let alone imagine what it sounds like to a child who has no idea or no frame of reference of what a computer is and trying to conceptualize what it actually is.”
So while their initial goal of a two-room, fifty laptop space that can house 100 students may seem small, the Atwima Takyiman Presbyterian Junior High School is located in a region where less than one-in-five households have computer access. Once they reach that milestone, the next goal is to share that space with four other local schools, before expanding their physical footprint across the country. The better part of Kingston’s career is a shared tale with the witty, wisecracking Xavier Woods and the loveable power house Big E, collectively known as The New Day. The trio, all solo acts with varying levels of success, took a risk by joining, and became WWE’s most successful and enduring unit, with memorable moments, millions sold in merchandise, and appearances in everything from grocery store aisles to video games. But it’s what they contribute to the world outside of wrestling that keeps them going, that gives on-screen accomplishments a real world perspective. Kingston mentions Xaviers Woods’s success with his YouTube channel UpUpDownDown, which features WWE and AEW talent playing video, card, and other games, as well as Big E’s Our Heroes Rock project as examples of how the three of them share a desire to use their platforms in a positive, uplifting light.
In 2014, Kingston would share his Royal Rumble moment with former tag team partner CM Punk, and Rusev (now known as AEW’s Miro). CM Punk was a year removed from a historic title run, highlighted by feuds with John Cena and The Rock. Rusev’s biggest WWE moment was about a year away, where he’d lose his undefeated streak and United States title to Cena at WrestleMania 31. Punk would knock Kingston into the arms of a recently eliminated Rusev who caught Kofi, slamming him onto the guardrail, leaving him there to flail. Kofi, against the backdrop of a “Kofi Stinkston” sign, would run the rail and make what must've been a ten foot leap back to the apron.
“I’m intimidated!” Kofi laughs, looking at the credentials of his partners in the CLICK endeavor. “I’m the least accomplished one!” CLICK’s board of trustees is a who’s who of Academia. With two PhD holders, one PhD candidate, and one member with a Master’s degree, Kofi Bachelor’s of Science in Communications has him once again in a unique spot among his peers. But he’s very aware of his role among the biggest of brains. “It was a situation where my parents, they didn't really understand what it was that I was trying to do. And even when I got signed, I was like, ‘yeah, I got signed with WWE.’ And they were like, ‘OK,’” Kofi remembers. “They didn't really understand how big it was. They had never seen me wrestle on the indies. They had never seen me do a practice or anything like that. It wasn't until Survivor Series…where they came to the show in Boston and they saw like, ‘oh my God, how big of a production this was.’ They saw the fireworks and the pyro, and they were totally engrossed in the spectacle that is WWE. Especially my mom. Now she's got all the shirts and everything. She's my biggest fan and everything now.”
Becoming the top champion in the largest organization is enough to impress your PhD-holding parent, to the point where Kofi’s visibility would make him CLICK’s face of advertising. While the other four trustees will focus on implementation and the ways to properly discover and utilize both library materials and online information, Kofi is both the friendly face, and evidence of Ghana’s ability to produce excellence. You could see the connection, the desire to present a future to the children of Ghana, soon after his WWE Championship victory. He visited his father’s hometown of Ejisu, and reflected on the birthplace of Kente cloth, the basis of the tattoos that line his spine, and other local cultures and customs. Even with the opportunities he's had, he acknowledges his path is different, his identity is different, his skillset is different than those before him. But with the right belief, and the right tools, like access to technology, you can become more than your situation, greater than others’ expectations. “You're not supposed to become a movie star, or I don't know anybody that's an NBA player. Well, I don't know anybody that's a WWE champion. So they just get into this mode where they're like, ‘well, if you're trying to do that, then how are you going to provide for your family? What are you going to do?’ And you got to just find a way to be like, ‘OK, this is what I want to do, and these are the steps I have to take to get there, and that's what it's going to be. So you just have to have laser focus and laser vision when it comes to pursuing your dreams. And just continuing to believe in yourself is just so important because there's going to be days where you don't want to train or you don't want to work towards your goal. But then when you have that end goal in mind of where you want to go and where you want to be, it becomes a little easier.”
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In 2015, Kofi was tossed over the top rope, and saved by Adam Rose’s collection of party pals, the Rose Buds. CLICK, with the goal of providing technology to the children of Ghana, is something you can build a legacy off of. But Kofi’s not overly concerned about being celebrated. When he talks about what he’s done in wrestling, it’s brief. He’s just as comfortable being the opening act as he is being the main event. He’s been a Power Ranger. He’s been a pancake chef. He’s defended our realm from Outworld. “Maybe they came to see me twerk.” he says, recognizing the range he’s had over the years. Even when he does open up, it’s almost always to include the people around him that made it possible. “When Ali got injured…” either leads, or is very much ingrained into Kofi’s path of becoming WWE champion. Mustafi Ali was all but assured a crowning moment on wrestling’s biggest stage, but plans change, and Kofi was willing to embrace the moment. “I believe it is so important, especially as children, for us to see people who look like us achieving incredible accolades. It’s one thing to say that anything is possible in theory. It is another thing entirely to say anything is possible because you’ve seen the impossible happen. When I became WWE champion, so many people on social media sent me videos of their kids gleefully witnessing the moment. Grown adults were brought to tears when they told me about how they never thought they would see an African-born WWE champion in their lifetime.” But when he starts talking about his unique fraternity, you see an understanding of a world where the we is what makes things work, what allows us to progress. The gap between Kofi’s historic title win at WrestleMania 35 and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s initial WWE title win at Survivor Series: Deadly Games is twenty years, four months, and twenty-three days. But outside of the rarity, Kofi takes pride in a more recent moment, a picture shared between himself, Bobby Lashley, and Big E, who both won the WWE title in the last three years.
How does Kofi want to be remembered? What does he want his legacy to be? “Legacy is always a strange question for me,” he shares. If and how I am remembered is not nearly as important to me as how I [am] able to help people. I want to help push people in the direction of their dreams so that they may achieve the same level or at least a fraction of the joy and happiness in their lives that I…achieved in mine. I don’t need people to remind others that I am the one who did that for them. I don’t need them to remember my accolades.” He’s given us some of the most breathtaking moments on wrestling’s most exciting stage. He wants to ensure that he’s the rule, not the exception, in a world where resources can be anywhere from scarce to non-existent. Even with CLICK’s goals, they’ve made it a point to show what they’ve already able to accomplish. To date, they’ve already acquired the land needed for the two-room center, have installed the water and electricity, as well as much of the furniture and artwork. Like all those Royal Rumble moments, even when help was provided, it was Kofi’s determination that sealed his survival. Showing that the work isn’t one-sided, that shared goals produce moments for everyone, has been the enduring quality of his career’s work. Leaving the world—both the world of wrestling, and the one that we all share—better is what the son of two teachers deems as standard, not special. “For me to be at the center of all these emotions is truly humbling because at any point in my 11-year journey toward becoming WWE champion, I could have easily given up. It was only because I chose to push through the obstacles and keep going that I was able to achieve my childhood dream and simultaneously but push people to achieve theirs. As I said before, my main goal has always been to motivate people and push them toward achieving their dreams and that’s exactly what the moment has done. When people relive ‘Kofimania’ then think about their goals and the obstacles that stand before them, they think, ‘This may be hard, but I can do it because I saw Kofi do it.’ I take so much pride in that notion.” His feet very rarely touch the ground, but he’s steadfast in his desire to serve others.
Since this interview, Kofi Kingston had the ribbon cutting for a library and digital center in Ghana.
