WWE superstar Kofi Kingston recently spoke with Shakiel Mahjouri from CBS Sports, where the former world champion spoke about his longtime New Day partner, Big E, and the work he’s been doing in the company’s main event scene. Highlights are below.
Unhappy with WWE’s early interpretations of Big E:
“Big E’s reign was just magical and beautiful in so many different ways. There are very few people in this industry that can move a crowd the way that he does on the mic. He does it in such a different way, just galvanizes people. Gets people on their feet and gets them to believe in themselves,” Kingston said. “That’s really unique.” When he debuted, he was Dolph Ziggler’s bodyguard. All of a sudden they told him like, ‘Hey, you gotta go out there and you gotta be stoic. You gotta be big.’ So you see him out there with a serious face on and folding his arms and looking big and intimidating and brooding. Then they had the nerve to tell him, ‘Hey, you know what, you don’t have enough personality.’ And it’s like, ‘What? You told him, you said to strip all personality out of your persona and go out there and look big and menacing. That’s what you told him to do. So now you’re saying, ‘Well, he doesn’t have any personality.’ And now you’re on the verge of pulling him off the main roster because of what you told him to do. So the fact that he was able to take that and make it into what he did.”
How Big E took the scraps he was given and turned them into gold:
“It was just somebody who took the scraps that they were given and they kept on building and building and building and building into the entity that he is now. He just was so deserving of that championship. I think that he covered all the bases. He checked off all the boxes with regards to what he brought to the table,” Kingston said. “The way he’s able to move people, his look, his athleticism and his demeanor and his approach to the WWE. It was someone who had worked really from nothing. From being nothing in this industry to beating the odds and being something that he wanted to be versus what he was told to be. Now he’s the champ. So that story in and of itself to me was like, “Wow, what a journey…’ I’m sure he’s going to be champion again at some point in time.”