Give Kofi the strap.

[Deleted]

Feb 14, 2019 22:56:02 GMT -5 2coldMack is even more baffled said:

I really wish we could stop, as fans, getting our hopes up with "STRAP HIM UP!" after one good match. This is the dude that, until that one good match was going "Man, pancakes is a funny word, huh?" shit in the mid-card. He caught a lucky break, and had a good match, but that's all this is. You're setting yourselves up for disappointment, man.

I want him to be champion based on a hell of a lot more than one match. The story of the beloved veteran *finally* winning the big one, for instance.

That said, I don't expect shit from this company. Nothing wrong with rooting for a guy though.

[Can you afford to pay me, Gah]

Feb 14, 2019 23:05:02 GMT -5 @rebelliousworkhorse said:

Feb 14, 2019 22:56:02 GMT -5 2coldMack is even more baffled said:

I really wish we could stop, as fans, getting our hopes up with "STRAP HIM UP!" after one good match. This is the dude that, until that one good match was going "Man, pancakes is a funny word, huh?" shit in the mid-card. He caught a lucky break, and had a good match, but that's all this is. You're setting yourselves up for disappointment, man.

I want him to be champion based on a hell of a lot more than one match. The story of the beloved veteran *finally* winning the big one, for instance.

That said, I don't expect shit from this company. Nothing wrong with rooting for a guy though.

The guys been having good matches for YEARS. Sure the New Day stuff been goofy but it got so over which is why the are still a thing. Kofi proven himself more than once he deserves a legit chance. They always hype his Rumble saves but never wins and nothing comes of it. The guy deserves it and yes I like the idea of the veteran story getting the big one finally. I also like the idea suggested that lead to a break up. Kofi against E or Woods would be great matches.

[Big DSR Energy]

Feb 14, 2019 23:12:52 GMT -5 Can you afford to pay me, Gah said:

Feb 14, 2019 23:05:02 GMT -5 @rebelliousworkhorse said:

I want him to be champion based on a hell of a lot more than one match. The story of the beloved veteran *finally* winning the big one, for instance.

That said, I don't expect shit from this company. Nothing wrong with rooting for a guy though.

The guys been having good matches for YEARS. Sure the New Day stuff been goofy but it got so over which is why the are still a thing. Kofi proven himself more than once he deserves a legit chance. They always hype his Rumble saves but never wins and nothing comes of it. The guy deserves it and yes I like the idea of the veteran story getting the big one finally. I also like the idea suggested that lead to a break up. Kofi against E or Woods would be great matches.

And people forget that New Day clowns around in promos and stuff but they've proven time and again that they can get down to business and put on bangers once the bell rings. They don't have to completely lose the jokes and stuff, just tone it down and remind people like Kofi did this past Tuesday.

[Deleted]

Hearing Big E say that they might be great salesmen, they might make jokes, they might play around but when it's time for them to get down they can do it. Then the guy says Kofi's one of the greatest to ever do it and you look back at this dude's stats.

4 time Intercontinental Champion...
3 time United States Champion...
4 time Raw Tag Team Champion...
3 time Smackdown Tag Team Champion...
1 time World Tag Team Champion...

Then look at his Rumble saves...
Then you look at his ladder and other gimmick match stunts...
Then you look at the fact he's a member of New Day and all they've accomplished...
Including being the longest reigning tag team of all time...
Including Kofi being the person with the most combined number of days as tag team champion in the company's entire history...

Kofi's done an amazing job at keeping his head down and making a name for himself these last 11 years. You have to think that in all of Kofi's years kayfabe-wise he's never been the "dammit I gotta get the world title at any cost" type of guy and yet he's still been able to be successful without it. It makes you wonder what he and New Day will accomplish when he's like "f*** it, it's world champion Kofi time."

Imagine Kofi walking to the ring at Wrestlemania to face Bryan and as he's doing it you hear Big E and Xavier listing his stats off like an NBA player or something. That's ballin.

[Deleted]

Feb 15, 2019 1:50:17 GMT -5 Big DSR Energy said:

Feb 14, 2019 23:12:52 GMT -5 Can you afford to pay me, Gah said:

The guys been having good matches for YEARS. Sure the New Day stuff been goofy but it got so over which is why the are still a thing. Kofi proven himself more than once he deserves a legit chance. They always hype his Rumble saves but never wins and nothing comes of it. The guy deserves it and yes I like the idea of the veteran story getting the big one finally. I also like the idea suggested that lead to a break up. Kofi against E or Woods would be great matches.

And people forget that New Day clowns around in promos and stuff but they've proven time and again that they can get down to business and put on bangers once the bell rings. They don't have to completely lose the jokes and stuff, just tone it down and remind people like Kofi did this past Tuesday.

Hell, New Day was part of probably the most brutal Hell in a Cell of the last decade.

["Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay]

Feb 14, 2019 21:19:31 GMT -5 Final Countdown Jones said:

Feb 14, 2019 20:50:16 GMT -5 "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay said:

Ali now needs to beat Kofi. His character wants to, I mean. That was his spot and Kofi shone. He needs to prove he can outdo him.

If neither has anything to do I would love to see a big babyface vs. babyface match at Fastlane where they go long and the whole thing is built up as Ali proving he would have excelled in the spot he did, but without any major hard feelings. If they're not going to do anything big with Kofi this would be a great alternative to make something of that momentum. Much as I would love to see them actually do something with Kofi instead.

My vote is to do both. Give Kofi something to do on the way to Mania until he gets to Bryan.

[Deleted]

Feb 13, 2019 1:36:52 GMT -5 Lizuka #BLM said:

Followup promo on Youtube. They are pushing the HELL out of the idea that Kofi getting the title is overdue and New Day wants nothing more than for him to have it.

Old Day makes TV. Bayley, this is your life makes TV. Lashley's man-sisters make TV. Gold like this gets relegated to YouTube.

This f***ing company.

[TheMediocreWarrior]

I will be really disappointed if Kofi isn't the #1 contender for WrestleMania.

-He's won the tag team titles and midcard singles titles a bunch of times.
-New Day has been consistently over for years.
-New Day's commercialism and promotion of junk food makes them the opposite of Daniel Bryan.

I'm hoping that New Day promo is a sign that the writing team has a clue that the perfect WrestleMania opponent for Daniel Bryan is so obvious.

It has also been 15 years since Eddie Guerrero unexpectedly won the WWE Championship from Brock Lesnar. Maybe WWE could promote the idea that February is the month for underdogs getting surprise championship wins before WrestleMania?

[Citizen Snips]

Feb 15, 2019 1:56:08 GMT -5 @kn said:

Hearing Big E say that they might be great salesmen, they might make jokes, they might play around but when it's time for them to get down they can do it. Then the guy says Kofi's one of the greatest to ever do it and you look back at this dude's stats.

I don't want this to come across as a knock on Kofi; he's a fine wrestler and has had a great career...but calling him one of the greatest to ever do it is a STRETCH. Even if it's his buddy hyping it up, it's still a hard one to swallow.

[Deleted]

www.wwe.com/article/kofi-kingston-should-win-the-wwe-championship

Here’s why Kofi Kingston should win the WWE Championship on Sunday

First, consider the man himself — and if you’ve never met him, we can help with that.

It’s a little bit of unofficial tradition here at WWE Digital to get Kofi Kingston on the phone whenever he breaks some sort of record. It’s been happening a lot lately, both because he’s had the kind of longevity and success that eventually leads you to start breaking records, and because Kofi Kingston’s most immediate characteristic is that he’s willing to do whatever he’s asked, no matter when it is asked of him. Sliding into a Gauntlet Match on about 45 minutes’ notice is just the most immediate, visible example of this; the man has seemingly fielded the most difficult, or at least random, details that this industry has to offer and turned them into something must-see.

Need somebody to wrestle Brock Lesnar in Japan? Sure, why not. Seeking a post-match comment for the YouTube channel? He and his boys will talk for ten minutes straight and it’ll be so funny you’ll have no choice but to publish the whole thing. Looking for his thoughts on how it feels to break some arcane tag team record? It’s his day off, but sure, just give him a minute to put the baby down. (That last one really happened, by the way.)

If he’s Mr. Reliable in front of the camera, he’s even better behind it, always willing and eager to pose for pictures, answer silly questions for a silly feature, and never fails to give you something good out of it — like, for instance, a very entertaining aside during his 10-year retrospective about how he’s still kind of peeved Vladimir Kozlov beat him out for Rookie of the Year at the Slammys. Let’s put it another way: This place has been likened (accurately) to both a machine and a beast that need to be fed. If it is a beast, Kofi Kingston is its vital organ. If it is a machine, he is the cog in the center. WWE without Kofi Kingston is like a car without an engine: You could technically make it move, but then it wouldn’t be a car, would it?

Consider the timing as well. This Sunday, Kofi will step into the Elimination Chamber and challenge for the WWE Championship held by the PETA-endorsed honey badger we’ve taken to calling “The New” Daniel Bryan. He should win. It will be his first WWE Championship opportunity since the 2016 Royal Rumble Match. He should have won that, too. Before that it was the 2012 Elimination Chamber, and if Kofi had won that and faced CM Punk at WrestleMania nobody would have complained much. Saying Kofi Kingston should be WWE Champion is not a new or novel take, though there are certainly new and novel ideas at play should he prevail in Sunday’s contest. (Can The New Day Freebird a World Title? They want to know; we want to know; and they know that we want to know.) What’s different now is that this seems to be his time. That’s a strange thing to say for an 11-year veteran but there’s an air of destiny about him all the same; he’s in that weird place where it just feels like he should be the guy to win, regardless of how he got there.

Kofi Kingston competed for more than an hour on Tuesday, sending a strong message before challenging for the WWE Championship at Elimination Chamber 2019.

As to that, yes, Kofi is technically a pinch-hitter. He’s in the match to replace Mustafa Ali, a profanely talented Cruiserweight with a ceiling so high that the wrestling gods probably had to clear his creation with the Chicago zoning board. (A long shot sentimental favorite in the Chamber, Ali was beset by injuries and sent to the bench; his time will surely come.) But Kingston’s performance on SmackDown LIVE this past Tuesday was not one of those happy-to-be-here deals where the replacement shows up, puts in a few minutes to remind the crowd how good he is (or was) and makes it known that he could win it all if he had more time to prepare. Instead, he gave a marathon performance by any measure; it was a night in which Kofi seemingly brought every single lesson of his decade-plus to bear in the ring. He was fighting, fighting to prove that he could win this match; that he could win the next match; that it was an insane oversight to assume he shouldn’t have been in either match in the first place. He may have gotten his point across. The audience was justifiably on its feet when Kingston finally hit the AJ Styles-shaped wall that sent him to the showers; if the WWE Universe is, in fact, the ultimate arbiter of who rises and falls, they appeared to have cast their vote.

Randy Orton won the match with one of his patented outta-nowhere RKOs, but it’s Kofi — who pinned a current and former WWE Champion, as well as a two-time NXT Champion, before he could go no further — who seems to have all the momentum. It’s too soon to tell if the Gauntlet run will change Kofi’s reputation the way it did for Seth Rollins last year, but it has certainly boosted his odds for Sunday. Cliché as it is to say, sometimes, that’s all a good veteran needs.

Consider, also, the résumé. There’s a sort of unstated logic that a WWE Champion must be built, not anointed — that you have to win a few on the way up. Kofi’s won ’em all. Four Intercontinental Titles. Three United States Titles. Seven Tag Team Titles and a couple lines in the history books to go with them. A Slammy, even: the “Tell Me I Didn’t Just See That” trophy in 2012 for the first of his many, many, Royal Rumble close calls. It’s not Rookie of the Year, but it’s still something.

There are also the accomplishments you can’t put in a trophy case, the ones that fly just below the radar, or maybe a teensy bit behind the curtain. If a champion must be marketable, here’s your reminder that The New Day sold enough merch at WrestleMania 32 to float the Texas state budget. If a champion must have integrity, Kofi has deftly defused many a Twitter kerfuffle and proven a thoughtful contributor to difficult discussions. If a champion must crush his enemies when warranted, head on over to UpUpDownDown, where Kofi can be seen coolly driving some of the most competitive people in the world to literal fits as he dissects them in Madden. (There is lingering beef with Seth Rollins over such an instance, and it is a salty cut indeed.)


And if a champion must have the respect of his peers, Rollins told a revealing story on Edge & Christian’s podcast this past week about how he was hesitant, even at his most opportunistic, to simply destroy Kofi Kingston in the ring when the opportunity presented itself. The opponent was too credible, too accomplished to be made a meal of. Kofi, he reasoned, is a man to be lifted up even in defeat. It should never look like he’s just grateful to be there because the opposite, really, is true.

There’s a bit of a grassroots campaign going on right now in the form of a fan-created graphic placing the WWE Title over Kingston’s shoulder, with the floating heads of Big E and Xavier Woods looking on from above. “It is time,” the image reads, “for Kofi Kingston to shine.” It’s a worthy sentiment, yet the statement is inaccurate. The man has been shining. He could have gone an hour in the ring at any point in his career, the only difference is that if he does it again Sunday he won’t be the underdog anymore. He’s been running the gauntlet, and he just needs his last and most elusive gem. He’s a WWE Champion in all but name, and it’s long past due he makes it official.

When he does, tell him to stand by his phone. We want to give him a call for a few minutes.

Yeah we know that Kofi isn't winning but it's interesting to see this momentum. We know why it's happening, it doesn't mean it's any less great.

[Tom Turkey]

Feb 16, 2019 14:35:13 GMT -5 @kn said:

www.wwe.com/article/kofi-kingston-should-win-the-wwe-championship

Here’s why Kofi Kingston should win the WWE Championship on Sunday

First, consider the man himself — and if you’ve never met him, we can help with that.

It’s a little bit of unofficial tradition here at WWE Digital to get Kofi Kingston on the phone whenever he breaks some sort of record. It’s been happening a lot lately, both because he’s had the kind of longevity and success that eventually leads you to start breaking records, and because Kofi Kingston’s most immediate characteristic is that he’s willing to do whatever he’s asked, no matter when it is asked of him. Sliding into a Gauntlet Match on about 45 minutes’ notice is just the most immediate, visible example of this; the man has seemingly fielded the most difficult, or at least random, details that this industry has to offer and turned them into something must-see.

Need somebody to wrestle Brock Lesnar in Japan? Sure, why not. Seeking a post-match comment for the YouTube channel? He and his boys will talk for ten minutes straight and it’ll be so funny you’ll have no choice but to publish the whole thing. Looking for his thoughts on how it feels to break some arcane tag team record? It’s his day off, but sure, just give him a minute to put the baby down. (That last one really happened, by the way.)

If he’s Mr. Reliable in front of the camera, he’s even better behind it, always willing and eager to pose for pictures, answer silly questions for a silly feature, and never fails to give you something good out of it — like, for instance, a very entertaining aside during his 10-year retrospective about how he’s still kind of peeved Vladimir Kozlov beat him out for Rookie of the Year at the Slammys. Let’s put it another way: This place has been likened (accurately) to both a machine and a beast that need to be fed. If it is a beast, Kofi Kingston is its vital organ. If it is a machine, he is the cog in the center. WWE without Kofi Kingston is like a car without an engine: You could technically make it move, but then it wouldn’t be a car, would it?

Consider the timing as well. This Sunday, Kofi will step into the Elimination Chamber and challenge for the WWE Championship held by the PETA-endorsed honey badger we’ve taken to calling “The New” Daniel Bryan. He should win. It will be his first WWE Championship opportunity since the 2016 Royal Rumble Match. He should have won that, too. Before that it was the 2012 Elimination Chamber, and if Kofi had won that and faced CM Punk at WrestleMania nobody would have complained much. Saying Kofi Kingston should be WWE Champion is not a new or novel take, though there are certainly new and novel ideas at play should he prevail in Sunday’s contest. (Can The New Day Freebird a World Title? They want to know; we want to know; and they know that we want to know.) What’s different now is that this seems to be his time. That’s a strange thing to say for an 11-year veteran but there’s an air of destiny about him all the same; he’s in that weird place where it just feels like he should be the guy to win, regardless of how he got there.

Kofi Kingston competed for more than an hour on Tuesday, sending a strong message before challenging for the WWE Championship at Elimination Chamber 2019.

As to that, yes, Kofi is technically a pinch-hitter. He’s in the match to replace Mustafa Ali, a profanely talented Cruiserweight with a ceiling so high that the wrestling gods probably had to clear his creation with the Chicago zoning board. (A long shot sentimental favorite in the Chamber, Ali was beset by injuries and sent to the bench; his time will surely come.) But Kingston’s performance on SmackDown LIVE this past Tuesday was not one of those happy-to-be-here deals where the replacement shows up, puts in a few minutes to remind the crowd how good he is (or was) and makes it known that he could win it all if he had more time to prepare. Instead, he gave a marathon performance by any measure; it was a night in which Kofi seemingly brought every single lesson of his decade-plus to bear in the ring. He was fighting, fighting to prove that he could win this match; that he could win the next match; that it was an insane oversight to assume he shouldn’t have been in either match in the first place. He may have gotten his point across. The audience was justifiably on its feet when Kingston finally hit the AJ Styles-shaped wall that sent him to the showers; if the WWE Universe is, in fact, the ultimate arbiter of who rises and falls, they appeared to have cast their vote.

Randy Orton won the match with one of his patented outta-nowhere RKOs, but it’s Kofi — who pinned a current and former WWE Champion, as well as a two-time NXT Champion, before he could go no further — who seems to have all the momentum. It’s too soon to tell if the Gauntlet run will change Kofi’s reputation the way it did for Seth Rollins last year, but it has certainly boosted his odds for Sunday. Cliché as it is to say, sometimes, that’s all a good veteran needs.

Consider, also, the résumé. There’s a sort of unstated logic that a WWE Champion must be built, not anointed — that you have to win a few on the way up. Kofi’s won ’em all. Four Intercontinental Titles. Three United States Titles. Seven Tag Team Titles and a couple lines in the history books to go with them. A Slammy, even: the “Tell Me I Didn’t Just See That” trophy in 2012 for the first of his many, many, Royal Rumble close calls. It’s not Rookie of the Year, but it’s still something.

There are also the accomplishments you can’t put in a trophy case, the ones that fly just below the radar, or maybe a teensy bit behind the curtain. If a champion must be marketable, here’s your reminder that The New Day sold enough merch at WrestleMania 32 to float the Texas state budget. If a champion must have integrity, Kofi has deftly defused many a Twitter kerfuffle and proven a thoughtful contributor to difficult discussions. If a champion must crush his enemies when warranted, head on over to UpUpDownDown, where Kofi can be seen coolly driving some of the most competitive people in the world to literal fits as he dissects them in Madden. (There is lingering beef with Seth Rollins over such an instance, and it is a salty cut indeed.)


And if a champion must have the respect of his peers, Rollins told a revealing story on Edge & Christian’s podcast this past week about how he was hesitant, even at his most opportunistic, to simply destroy Kofi Kingston in the ring when the opportunity presented itself. The opponent was too credible, too accomplished to be made a meal of. Kofi, he reasoned, is a man to be lifted up even in defeat. It should never look like he’s just grateful to be there because the opposite, really, is true.

There’s a bit of a grassroots campaign going on right now in the form of a fan-created graphic placing the WWE Title over Kingston’s shoulder, with the floating heads of Big E and Xavier Woods looking on from above. “It is time,” the image reads, “for Kofi Kingston to shine.” It’s a worthy sentiment, yet the statement is inaccurate. The man has been shining. He could have gone an hour in the ring at any point in his career, the only difference is that if he does it again Sunday he won’t be the underdog anymore. He’s been running the gauntlet, and he just needs his last and most elusive gem. He’s a WWE Champion in all but name, and it’s long past due he makes it official.

When he does, tell him to stand by his phone. We want to give him a call for a few minutes.

Yeah we know that Kofi isn't winning but it's interesting to see this momentum. We know why it's happening, it doesn't mean it's any less great.

At the very least, he should get the big Wrestlemania angle facing Bryan.

[Deleted]

At the very least even if you don't want to give Kofi the Mania moment, have him win the Elimination Chamber and lose it back at Fastlane. At the very least it'd be something of interest actually f***ing happening on the road to Mania for once and you'd still be getting a nice moment out of it.

And it's not like Bryan actually has any momentum to disrupt given he's done nothing but come out to silence then scream at the crowd to rile them up before AJ inevitably cuts him off. If anything giving him a more direct target would probably help to give the character some actual focus.

[bog]

Feb 14, 2019 22:56:02 GMT -5 2coldMack is even more baffled said:

I really wish we could stop, as fans, getting our hopes up with "STRAP HIM UP!" after one good match. This is the dude that, until that one good match was going "Man, pancakes is a funny word, huh?" shit in the mid-card. He caught a lucky break, and had a good match, but that's all this is. You're setting yourselves up for disappointment, man.

It's ok to get excited about something, even if it doesn't actually happen. I don't know if it will happen, but I want it to, and I'm going to let myself mark out at his performance at EC. That's wrestling. 

I don't get this weird fear to "be worked" or become a "mark." You know who enjoys wrestling the most? Marks.

[msc]

Feb 16, 2019 14:35:13 GMT -5 @kn said:

www.wwe.com/article/kofi-kingston-should-win-the-wwe-championship

Here’s why Kofi Kingston should win the WWE Championship on Sunday

First, consider the man himself — and if you’ve never met him, we can help with that.

It’s a little bit of unofficial tradition here at WWE Digital to get Kofi Kingston on the phone whenever he breaks some sort of record. It’s been happening a lot lately, both because he’s had the kind of longevity and success that eventually leads you to start breaking records, and because Kofi Kingston’s most immediate characteristic is that he’s willing to do whatever he’s asked, no matter when it is asked of him. Sliding into a Gauntlet Match on about 45 minutes’ notice is just the most immediate, visible example of this; the man has seemingly fielded the most difficult, or at least random, details that this industry has to offer and turned them into something must-see.

Need somebody to wrestle Brock Lesnar in Japan? Sure, why not. Seeking a post-match comment for the YouTube channel? He and his boys will talk for ten minutes straight and it’ll be so funny you’ll have no choice but to publish the whole thing. Looking for his thoughts on how it feels to break some arcane tag team record? It’s his day off, but sure, just give him a minute to put the baby down. (That last one really happened, by the way.)

If he’s Mr. Reliable in front of the camera, he’s even better behind it, always willing and eager to pose for pictures, answer silly questions for a silly feature, and never fails to give you something good out of it — like, for instance, a very entertaining aside during his 10-year retrospective about how he’s still kind of peeved Vladimir Kozlov beat him out for Rookie of the Year at the Slammys. Let’s put it another way: This place has been likened (accurately) to both a machine and a beast that need to be fed. If it is a beast, Kofi Kingston is its vital organ. If it is a machine, he is the cog in the center. WWE without Kofi Kingston is like a car without an engine: You could technically make it move, but then it wouldn’t be a car, would it?

Consider the timing as well. This Sunday, Kofi will step into the Elimination Chamber and challenge for the WWE Championship held by the PETA-endorsed honey badger we’ve taken to calling “The New” Daniel Bryan. He should win. It will be his first WWE Championship opportunity since the 2016 Royal Rumble Match. He should have won that, too. Before that it was the 2012 Elimination Chamber, and if Kofi had won that and faced CM Punk at WrestleMania nobody would have complained much. Saying Kofi Kingston should be WWE Champion is not a new or novel take, though there are certainly new and novel ideas at play should he prevail in Sunday’s contest. (Can The New Day Freebird a World Title? They want to know; we want to know; and they know that we want to know.) What’s different now is that this seems to be his time. That’s a strange thing to say for an 11-year veteran but there’s an air of destiny about him all the same; he’s in that weird place where it just feels like he should be the guy to win, regardless of how he got there.

Kofi Kingston competed for more than an hour on Tuesday, sending a strong message before challenging for the WWE Championship at Elimination Chamber 2019.

As to that, yes, Kofi is technically a pinch-hitter. He’s in the match to replace Mustafa Ali, a profanely talented Cruiserweight with a ceiling so high that the wrestling gods probably had to clear his creation with the Chicago zoning board. (A long shot sentimental favorite in the Chamber, Ali was beset by injuries and sent to the bench; his time will surely come.) But Kingston’s performance on SmackDown LIVE this past Tuesday was not one of those happy-to-be-here deals where the replacement shows up, puts in a few minutes to remind the crowd how good he is (or was) and makes it known that he could win it all if he had more time to prepare. Instead, he gave a marathon performance by any measure; it was a night in which Kofi seemingly brought every single lesson of his decade-plus to bear in the ring. He was fighting, fighting to prove that he could win this match; that he could win the next match; that it was an insane oversight to assume he shouldn’t have been in either match in the first place. He may have gotten his point across. The audience was justifiably on its feet when Kingston finally hit the AJ Styles-shaped wall that sent him to the showers; if the WWE Universe is, in fact, the ultimate arbiter of who rises and falls, they appeared to have cast their vote.

Randy Orton won the match with one of his patented outta-nowhere RKOs, but it’s Kofi — who pinned a current and former WWE Champion, as well as a two-time NXT Champion, before he could go no further — who seems to have all the momentum. It’s too soon to tell if the Gauntlet run will change Kofi’s reputation the way it did for Seth Rollins last year, but it has certainly boosted his odds for Sunday. Cliché as it is to say, sometimes, that’s all a good veteran needs.

Consider, also, the résumé. There’s a sort of unstated logic that a WWE Champion must be built, not anointed — that you have to win a few on the way up. Kofi’s won ’em all. Four Intercontinental Titles. Three United States Titles. Seven Tag Team Titles and a couple lines in the history books to go with them. A Slammy, even: the “Tell Me I Didn’t Just See That” trophy in 2012 for the first of his many, many, Royal Rumble close calls. It’s not Rookie of the Year, but it’s still something.

There are also the accomplishments you can’t put in a trophy case, the ones that fly just below the radar, or maybe a teensy bit behind the curtain. If a champion must be marketable, here’s your reminder that The New Day sold enough merch at WrestleMania 32 to float the Texas state budget. If a champion must have integrity, Kofi has deftly defused many a Twitter kerfuffle and proven a thoughtful contributor to difficult discussions. If a champion must crush his enemies when warranted, head on over to UpUpDownDown, where Kofi can be seen coolly driving some of the most competitive people in the world to literal fits as he dissects them in Madden. (There is lingering beef with Seth Rollins over such an instance, and it is a salty cut indeed.)


And if a champion must have the respect of his peers, Rollins told a revealing story on Edge & Christian’s podcast this past week about how he was hesitant, even at his most opportunistic, to simply destroy Kofi Kingston in the ring when the opportunity presented itself. The opponent was too credible, too accomplished to be made a meal of. Kofi, he reasoned, is a man to be lifted up even in defeat. It should never look like he’s just grateful to be there because the opposite, really, is true.

There’s a bit of a grassroots campaign going on right now in the form of a fan-created graphic placing the WWE Title over Kingston’s shoulder, with the floating heads of Big E and Xavier Woods looking on from above. “It is time,” the image reads, “for Kofi Kingston to shine.” It’s a worthy sentiment, yet the statement is inaccurate. The man has been shining. He could have gone an hour in the ring at any point in his career, the only difference is that if he does it again Sunday he won’t be the underdog anymore. He’s been running the gauntlet, and he just needs his last and most elusive gem. He’s a WWE Champion in all but name, and it’s long past due he makes it official.

When he does, tell him to stand by his phone. We want to give him a call for a few minutes.

Yeah we know that Kofi isn't winning but it's interesting to see this momentum. We know why it's happening, it doesn't mean it's any less great.

It's actually going to happen!

Not tomorrow but I mean "near future".

[Kevin Hamilton]

Jamaican him champion.

[Deleted]

Kofi has deserved a run for a long time. I’d love to see it, but I’ll believe it when it happens.

[Mister Pigwell]

Feb 16, 2019 14:35:13 GMT -5 @kn said:

www.wwe.com/article/kofi-kingston-should-win-the-wwe-championship

Here’s why Kofi Kingston should win the WWE Championship on Sunday

First, consider the man himself — and if you’ve never met him, we can help with that.

It’s a little bit of unofficial tradition here at WWE Digital to get Kofi Kingston on the phone whenever he breaks some sort of record. It’s been happening a lot lately, both because he’s had the kind of longevity and success that eventually leads you to start breaking records, and because Kofi Kingston’s most immediate characteristic is that he’s willing to do whatever he’s asked, no matter when it is asked of him. Sliding into a Gauntlet Match on about 45 minutes’ notice is just the most immediate, visible example of this; the man has seemingly fielded the most difficult, or at least random, details that this industry has to offer and turned them into something must-see.

Need somebody to wrestle Brock Lesnar in Japan? Sure, why not. Seeking a post-match comment for the YouTube channel? He and his boys will talk for ten minutes straight and it’ll be so funny you’ll have no choice but to publish the whole thing. Looking for his thoughts on how it feels to break some arcane tag team record? It’s his day off, but sure, just give him a minute to put the baby down. (That last one really happened, by the way.)

If he’s Mr. Reliable in front of the camera, he’s even better behind it, always willing and eager to pose for pictures, answer silly questions for a silly feature, and never fails to give you something good out of it — like, for instance, a very entertaining aside during his 10-year retrospective about how he’s still kind of peeved Vladimir Kozlov beat him out for Rookie of the Year at the Slammys. Let’s put it another way: This place has been likened (accurately) to both a machine and a beast that need to be fed. If it is a beast, Kofi Kingston is its vital organ. If it is a machine, he is the cog in the center. WWE without Kofi Kingston is like a car without an engine: You could technically make it move, but then it wouldn’t be a car, would it?

Consider the timing as well. This Sunday, Kofi will step into the Elimination Chamber and challenge for the WWE Championship held by the PETA-endorsed honey badger we’ve taken to calling “The New” Daniel Bryan. He should win. It will be his first WWE Championship opportunity since the 2016 Royal Rumble Match. He should have won that, too. Before that it was the 2012 Elimination Chamber, and if Kofi had won that and faced CM Punk at WrestleMania nobody would have complained much. Saying Kofi Kingston should be WWE Champion is not a new or novel take, though there are certainly new and novel ideas at play should he prevail in Sunday’s contest. (Can The New Day Freebird a World Title? They want to know; we want to know; and they know that we want to know.) What’s different now is that this seems to be his time. That’s a strange thing to say for an 11-year veteran but there’s an air of destiny about him all the same; he’s in that weird place where it just feels like he should be the guy to win, regardless of how he got there.

Kofi Kingston competed for more than an hour on Tuesday, sending a strong message before challenging for the WWE Championship at Elimination Chamber 2019.

As to that, yes, Kofi is technically a pinch-hitter. He’s in the match to replace Mustafa Ali, a profanely talented Cruiserweight with a ceiling so high that the wrestling gods probably had to clear his creation with the Chicago zoning board. (A long shot sentimental favorite in the Chamber, Ali was beset by injuries and sent to the bench; his time will surely come.) But Kingston’s performance on SmackDown LIVE this past Tuesday was not one of those happy-to-be-here deals where the replacement shows up, puts in a few minutes to remind the crowd how good he is (or was) and makes it known that he could win it all if he had more time to prepare. Instead, he gave a marathon performance by any measure; it was a night in which Kofi seemingly brought every single lesson of his decade-plus to bear in the ring. He was fighting, fighting to prove that he could win this match; that he could win the next match; that it was an insane oversight to assume he shouldn’t have been in either match in the first place. He may have gotten his point across. The audience was justifiably on its feet when Kingston finally hit the AJ Styles-shaped wall that sent him to the showers; if the WWE Universe is, in fact, the ultimate arbiter of who rises and falls, they appeared to have cast their vote.

Randy Orton won the match with one of his patented outta-nowhere RKOs, but it’s Kofi — who pinned a current and former WWE Champion, as well as a two-time NXT Champion, before he could go no further — who seems to have all the momentum. It’s too soon to tell if the Gauntlet run will change Kofi’s reputation the way it did for Seth Rollins last year, but it has certainly boosted his odds for Sunday. Cliché as it is to say, sometimes, that’s all a good veteran needs.

Consider, also, the résumé. There’s a sort of unstated logic that a WWE Champion must be built, not anointed — that you have to win a few on the way up. Kofi’s won ’em all. Four Intercontinental Titles. Three United States Titles. Seven Tag Team Titles and a couple lines in the history books to go with them. A Slammy, even: the “Tell Me I Didn’t Just See That” trophy in 2012 for the first of his many, many, Royal Rumble close calls. It’s not Rookie of the Year, but it’s still something.

There are also the accomplishments you can’t put in a trophy case, the ones that fly just below the radar, or maybe a teensy bit behind the curtain. If a champion must be marketable, here’s your reminder that The New Day sold enough merch at WrestleMania 32 to float the Texas state budget. If a champion must have integrity, Kofi has deftly defused many a Twitter kerfuffle and proven a thoughtful contributor to difficult discussions. If a champion must crush his enemies when warranted, head on over to UpUpDownDown, where Kofi can be seen coolly driving some of the most competitive people in the world to literal fits as he dissects them in Madden. (There is lingering beef with Seth Rollins over such an instance, and it is a salty cut indeed.)


And if a champion must have the respect of his peers, Rollins told a revealing story on Edge & Christian’s podcast this past week about how he was hesitant, even at his most opportunistic, to simply destroy Kofi Kingston in the ring when the opportunity presented itself. The opponent was too credible, too accomplished to be made a meal of. Kofi, he reasoned, is a man to be lifted up even in defeat. It should never look like he’s just grateful to be there because the opposite, really, is true.

There’s a bit of a grassroots campaign going on right now in the form of a fan-created graphic placing the WWE Title over Kingston’s shoulder, with the floating heads of Big E and Xavier Woods looking on from above. “It is time,” the image reads, “for Kofi Kingston to shine.” It’s a worthy sentiment, yet the statement is inaccurate. The man has been shining. He could have gone an hour in the ring at any point in his career, the only difference is that if he does it again Sunday he won’t be the underdog anymore. He’s been running the gauntlet, and he just needs his last and most elusive gem. He’s a WWE Champion in all but name, and it’s long past due he makes it official.

When he does, tell him to stand by his phone. We want to give him a call for a few minutes.

Yeah we know that Kofi isn't winning but it's interesting to see this momentum. We know why it's happening, it doesn't mean it's any less great.

Well my hopes are rising here.

[Kevin Hamilton]

Thing is, there's no downside to giving him an opportunity. He's a guy that fans across all demographics can get behind, casual&smark. He's always been pretty over, always been able to give you a good match etc. If he carried it for a bit and it wasn't working, you have him lose it. He'd at least be a fresh face in the main event that's gonna get a mostly positive response.

[Feargus McReddit]

Feb 16, 2019 17:18:21 GMT -5 Kevin Hamilton said:

Thing is, there's no downside to giving him an opportunity. He's a guy that fans across all demographics can get behind, casual&smark. He's always been pretty over, always been able to give you a good match etc. If he carried it for a bit and it wasn't working, you have him lose it. He'd at least be a fresh face in the main event that's gonna get a mostly positive response.

But ratings might go down an inch and that’ll mean no new people can main event ever again so we can’t have that!

[carp (SPC, Itoh Respect Army)]

I was playing a sporcle quiz a while ago ranking the number of days people have been some sort of champ in the WWE. Not counting Moolah, Sammartino, and Morales (who were WWWF or rapists), Kofi Kingston is SIXTH. He's above Shawn Michaels, Edge, Chris Jericho, Kane, Randy Orton, Big Show, Brock Lesnar, Bret Hart, and on and on and on.

He's the top guy to never win a word championship, and it's not even close. It's him, and then like 500 days of being champion, and then Billy Gunn.

This is an easy story to tell. He's an all-time great; objective stats bear that out. But he's never won the big one.