Credit: Marvel.com
Kofi Kingston recently spoke about comics, possible dream opponents and more. Here are the highlights…
On Dream Match Opponents: Anybody who I could wrestle with from back in the days would be amazing. I know last year on Raw’s 1000th episode, Heath Slater wrestled all the legends. There was a period of about two months where he got to wrestle Vader [and] Psycho Sid. As a kid, you used to watch these guys growing up. People were like “Heath Slater lost to Vader, he lost to Psycho Sid.” How much would you pay to get in the ring with them and just stand there? I wouldn’t care if I won or lost, I’m in there with my childhood idols. I thought it was really cool that he got to do that. If I could just get in the ring with anybody from back in the days when I was growing up, that’d be awesome. Shawn Michaels would probably be the best; he’s one of the big reasons as to why I got into WWE. Superfly Jimmy Snuka, Ricky Steamboat—if I got the opportunity to get into the ring with any of those guys it’d be awesome.
On His Favorite Raw Memories: There are so many out there. You know what was a really good one? The Montreal Screwjob. That was pretty crazy. I remember not knowing what was going on, the aftermath of it had so much buzz. Vince McMahon screwed Bret Hart over but people thought he was just an announcer. The line between what was real and what was not real was so blurred. It was pretty crazy being a fan and thinking that I had the inside track on what was going on. I was so drawn to it. There were a lot of ridiculous moments like the “Choppy Choppy” incident with Kai En Tai and Val Venis, Mae Young giving birth to a hand, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Vince McMahon in the hospital. There were so many things in “Raw” that were so entertaining. These are the things that separate us from any other venue in entertainment. We’re able to do it on a consistent basis. Over 20 years, we’ve been able to blow everybody out of the water. If you look at “M.A.S.H.” or “The Simpsons,” there’s nobody that’s even close to matching the episodic content that we put out. It’ll be an honor to be a part of that 20th anniversary show for sure.
On Avengers vs. X-Men: I’m definitely an X-Men guy. I always have been. I only started getting into Avengers recently, just after Civil War. I used to play the old X-Men video game a lot. Cody Rhodes has a big version of the game in his garage. I’m pretty jealous of that. I’ve always wanted a big arcade system and that’s the game that I want. X-Men all the way for sure.
On The Relationship Between Wrestling and Comics: Well, it’s crazy because there is a lot of stuff that you can do in real life. For example, Spider-Man does a lot of acrobatic stuff. I try to do stuff like that, either coming off the top rope or doing balancing acts. He’ll also talk trash while he’s doing it. He and I have a very similar kind of humor. I have a very corny sense of humor. I’ll just say the corniest things if I’m out there, kind of like he does. There’s definitely a lot of stuff that I do. Even with a guy like Wolverine, when he comes out and he just looks so bad. He has a healing factor and the way he comes up from being beat down, he’ll just rise up slowly and flex and all that stuff. It’s really powerful stuff to see visually. I try to implement that into real life and that same emotion translates to people. It’s just a different way to tell that same story.
