During a recent interview with AL.com, Kofi Kingston commented on a potential Big E. singles run in WWE, Superstars who made him laugh when he watched WWE back in the day, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On Superstars who made him laugh when he watched WWE: “I think before I got signed, I would definitely say Booker T, specifically King Booker was hilarious to me. It was such a departure from anything he had done at that point. Him portraying this elegant character and being the opposite of elegant, rugged in the ring and on the mic, it was one of the more entertaining thing. Since being on the roster, Santino Marella, without a shadow of a doubt, he is the funniest in-ring competitor…Anytime he was in the ring, people gathered around the monitor and wanted to see what he would do, whether he was going to the top rope and being afraid of heights and then jumping off the bottom rope and missing. It was really just a joy to see him out there and do his thing.”
On Big E having a singles run: “He could bring the world. Big E is a phenomenal competitor and just a really, really funny dude on so many different levels, easily the funniest one out of all three of us. Me and Woods say all the time, it’s not fair. He can just kind of look at you and have people dying laughing. He has his finger on the pulse of what is good in wrestling. He knows how to make things unique. I agree 100 percent that he would have an amazing singles run. I think a lot of people think that would mean the New Day would have to break up, and that’s not the case. We’ve always looked at ourselves as a faction. We’ve never looked at ourselves as just a tag team. We’ve never put ourselves in a box as far as being one thing. One of the possibilities that we’ve discussed is all of us having singles titles and still being a group and doing it because we are brothers. It’s a very real friendship and bond. We push each other and want everyone to achieve the most they can achieve. I say it all the time, with me being the WWE champion, I was the one wearing the title, but it was all three of us that were the champions because without Woods and E, I would not have been in that situation. We all support each other to the fullest. We push for the best for all of us. Hopefully that does come to fruition in some way, shape or form, but I guess we’ll all kind of just wait and see what happens. We show up to work and try to work with the scraps that we’re given and make the best of the opportunities we have. Everybody knows Big E would be an amazing singles competitor. If that were to happen, it would be with the New Day behind him 100 percent. We push each other to the fullest and want to achieve the most they can possibly achieve in this business and in life.”
On when he realized New Day was catching on: “It’s hard to pinpoint it. I think when we first came out, no one really knew what to expect from us or what we were supposed to be, but it wasn’t long before they decided they didn’t like us. We always point to Detroit and Philadelphia when the crowd was chanting how bad we were so loudly that we decided that we could actually be bad guys. It was really when people started to feel for us — we always say in the wrestling business it doesn’t matter if you cheer or boo, as long as you do something, you always want to have some emotion attached to what’s happening in the ring. People were definitely emotional when we were in the ring. I think that was the turning point when we knew we were a solid group, and then over time we became so good at being bad guys that people started to cheer for us, and here we are. We always knew we had a strong connection, and regardless of what we were given, we were going to be able to turn it and do something special with it. We didn’t know that it would end up being pancakes, unicorn horns, Booty-Os and ice cream and the other ridiculous things that we do, but here are entertaining people, and people like it.”
On NXT Superstars who could take a big step forward next year: “So Adam Cole has already taken a huge step this year being on Raw, SmackDown, NXT, even this past weekend with Survivor Series. Tommaso Ciampa, a guy who I trained with on the come-up who’s been kinda held down by injuries, he has the heart of a lion so I think it’s only a matter of time. He’s been knocking at the door of doing something special, had an amazing performance at Survivor Series this year. Keith Lee killed it this year, being in there with Roman Reigns and going toe-to-toe with Braun Strowman. He has a bright future. The list could go on and on and on, man. There’s so much amazing talent out there right now, and it’s a really, really special time in wrestling right now, and I guess we’ll all find out together.”
