KofiMania took the world by storm in 2019 as Kofi Kingston got his shot at Bryan Danielson (Daniel Bryan in WWE) and the WWE Championships.
Kingston had been in WWE since 2006 and WrestleMania 35 marked his first chance at the WWE Championship. In a promo segment with Vince McMahon leading up to WrestleMania, New Day (Big E & Xavier Woods) pushed for Kingston to get his title opportunity.
In the segment, Kingston said, "I never complained about the fact that you never allowed someone like me to compete or contend for the WWE Title." McMahon responded by saying, "Opportunities are not given, they are earned."
Speaking to Andreas Hale and Mark Henry on Busted Open Radio, Big E & Woods reflected on the segment and what it meant for people of color.
"It was incredible because everything in this industry is so cutthroat. I don't know how many times we heard, 'Oh, you guys should fight each other. You should turn on New Day and be bad.' That story has been told so many times in wrestling. Ten out of ten times, that's what happens. We get the chance to not only tell this story of brotherhood, but we got to do it with real feelings and emotions. Do you remember the first time you saw the trailer for 'Get Out' and you went, 'oh, that's a horror movie, that's like real feelings.' I know it doesn't go that deep, but it's a real thing, meeting the family and all that stuff. Being able to take a feeling that so many people resonate with and put it in a genre that you're not necessarily expecting it to be in, I think, make it hit a lot harder because wrestling is social commentary of the culture and how people feeling and react and how people are in real life," said Woods.
Woods continued, "To hear that phrase said to somebody that you look up to, said to somebody like Kofi Kingston. 'What do you mean it's earned? What do you mean Kofi hasn't earned this?' I felt this, what do you mean I haven't earned this? You get mad and it gets real. We got the chance to tell that actual story and that's something no one else could have done. No one else could have done it in the way that we did it. To be able to bring something like that to the forefront of wrestling, for the culture and for everyone to see outside of the culture, to understand a little bit more, not on a grand scale, but even a little bit, to understand what it is for us to go through wrestling and go through life. Wrestling is great, I will love wrestling until the day that I die. Wrestling is a conduit for storytelling and emotional creation and that bond between people who have nothing to do with each other, they just love wrestling. I saw grown men crying at WrestleMania, of different races and religions, hugging. That's what wrestling is supposed to be. When we actually give time to stories and let people build houses in different ways and don't just do the same thing year after year after year after year, and we give people something different and we get to do something different, that's what this is. This is art of the highest form. The whole KofiMania situation was that in perfection."
Kingston had to earn his WrestleMania match by winning a gauntlet, which he failed to do, and then Woods & E had to win a gauntlet for him, which they did.
Big E said about the storyline, "We wanted to touch on this idea of a glass ceiling too, without being explicit with it, and take it how you want to. Are we saying Kofi is too skinny to be given the world title? Are we saying he's too black? We didn't necessarily use those terms, we didn't hit the nail exactly on the head, but you know what it's like to be incredibly talented, to work very hard, to have all the skills, and yet for some reason, you're not getting the next job. You're doing well, you're not out on the streets, you have a job, but why is it...no one is there to say it's because of your race or connections, no one is there to truly put it exactly into context why you haven't made that next step. For a lot of us, for people who look like us, we also wonder these things. We're out in the world, I stay just as long if not longer. I work harder, I work extra hours, why am I not getting that extra opportunity? Oftentimes, you can't explicitly point to the color of your skin being the reason, and we don't know."
He continued, "For us, we were walking a thin line with that storyline, but we wanted it to resonate with everyone who felt like they weren't getting that opportunity when they deserved it. There are so many of us who look like us, so many black and brown people who spent so long...you look at a guy like Kofi. He has been absurdly consistent, he's been healthy, he's one of the best human beings you'll ever meet. He's professional, he does everything the right way and has done it the right way for 15 years, and it took him a decade to finally get that title opportunity. Just a title shot, an opportunity, it took a decade. That storyline is so amazing and I give all the credit to Kofi. That's Kofi's story, he would've been in that story regardless, he didn't need me and Woods, but it was an honor for me to be part of it, to tell the story of brotherhood on top of that. The best stories resonate with people because they can be transferred outside of the ring. Those themes and stories we're telling, they hit you in the chest. You don't have to have trained a day in your life in the ring to understand what it's like to feel like you're worthy of more, but for some reason, you're not really given the opportunity."
Kingston would win the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 35 by defeating Bryan. He held the title until the SmackDown on Fox premiere on October 4, 2019 when he was defeated by Brock Lesnar.
Kingston & Woods are currently part of WWE SmackDown while Big E is sidelined with a neck injury.
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