When speaking to Alex McCarthy of talkSPORT, Former WWE Champion Kofi Kingston discussed his heartbreaking loss to Brock Lesnar and his desire to have the opportunity to actually work a full match with Brock:
“For me especially and anyone in this position as a WWE performer, I think we want to be the best and put on the best product we can and, yeah, it was a bit of a disappointment to go out there and have it go so quickly on the biggest night of SmackDown. You know, we’ve been talking about this deal with FOX and I’ve been lucky to have been at the forefront of it all since the beginning. So, to have it end like that was a little bit disheartening but it is what it is what it is, it’s not like I can really do anything about it!
“You show up to work one day and it’s like ‘this is what’s going to happen and it’s like ‘OK’. This is our job. The thing about it though, they talk about Ric Flair being a 16-time champion, but you can’t be a 16-time world champion without losing it 15 times. I knew it wasn’t going to last forever. Hopefully there’s more reigns to come and for what the experience was, it was almost six months to the day and like you said, one of the longest reigns in recent history. SO I’m just real fortunate to have done that and to have had so many great matches with such great competition, so I’m just glad to have experienced that.”
Kofi also discussed what Vince McMahon was like after his title run came to a close:
“We definitely had some words. It was positive because it was very special for both of us. You saw the documentary, when I came through gorilla after winning, he had tears in his eyes and we’re all hugging, myself, Woods and [Big] E. Because, it’s been a wild ride, man. Vince has been on the ride with us and he was actually one of the only people to support the New Day when we were first coming up. Granted, we didn’t want to be three preachers [laughs], but he was the one that actually gave us a chance to go out there and be a unit. So it’s been a journey and a journey for all of us.
“Just going through the ups and downs and him thinking we were going to be this widely accepted thing and we’re going to go out there and preach positivity and then all of a sudden, people turn and the jaded universe didn’t like being positive?! You know what I’m saying? But we were talking to him and he was like ‘Yeah, I thought this was going to be positive and you guys were right, so let’s see what we can do’ and he gave us the opportunity to be bad guys. It was an emotional journey for all of us, but he’s seen a lot of things in this business and it’s his job to make sure things keep progressing forward and he wanted to go in a different direction right then. So, like I said, I’m just fortunate to have had the experience.”
