Kofi Kingston has had quite an illustrious career with WWE, but there was a time when the former world champion spoke with a fake Jamaican accent, a gimmick he eventually dropped in a famous segment that also featured Triple H.
Kingston discussed his old accent during an interview with SHAK Wrestling, where he admits that it made him nervous that he was going to offend the Jamaican fanbase. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
Whether he was worried about offending Jamaicans with his fake accent:
Yeah, several times. I think like the thing about you know, Jamaican and dialect they speak with the patois and everything you can turn it on and turn it off and a lot of different cases so people would speak to me in the dialect and I’m like, oh, and then when they would hear me speak they were like, wait a minute, something’s kind of off.
Says Jamaican fans welcomed him when he visited there:
And I feel like they knew, but it wasn’t any kind of animosity or anything like that. Although I was very terrified that like, Jamaicans would be really, really angry with me. I actually went to Jamaica. At one point, and like, oh my god, I can’t believe this. I had an appearance there. And I was trying to tell them they know I’m not Jamaican now, but they welcomed me in with open arms.
How fans just love the entertainment value of WWE:
I think they love the entertainment value that we provide as WWE Superstars and they were just happy that someone was out there portraying a Jamaican in a positive light, luckily. But yeah, It got pretty awkward sometimes coming across different Jamaicans when they didn’t know, I was in fact, not from Jamaica, but it’s all good now.
(H/T and transcribed by WrestleZone)