D’Lo Brown was a recent guest on Total Engagement with Matt Koon and talked about how big Kofi Kingston‘s WWE Championship win is for the African American community and the next generation of professional wrestlers:
“It’s a huge moment in the history of wrestling because it’s going to inspire that next generation of wrestlers of color who will go ‘there’s somebody like me, who looks like me that can be a world champion.’ It’s not just some guy that gets beat up, but I can actually be a world champion because now I have a blueprint to go on. It’s a huge thing because it’s not something that just happens everyday.
I’ve heard people say ‘why does it have to be a black wrestler’ [issue]? It’s the same as if you go with the first women’s tag team titles, because it’s something that doesn’t happen every day. It’s OK to draw attention to the fact that it’s out of the norm and it’s cool as hell.
As a black wrestler, I just sat there—if you had a camera on me in my house, I had a stream of tears coming down my eyes because it’s something you hope for. Every black wrestler wants to be a world champion, but not every one of us gets that chance. It’s so nice to see someone that’s genuinely a nice guy like Kofi, who wasn’t supposed to be in that spot, by happenstance got put in there, and he capitalized on it over a three month run. It culminated on the biggest stage of them all. It doesn’t get any bigger than Mania, and for him to win the title right there, that’s going to reverberate around the wrestling world for years to come. There’s a ten year-old kid right now that’s going to go ‘the day I wanted to be a wrestler is the day I saw Kofi win the title.’”
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