Kofi Kingston says he has a few years left on his contract, and he discusses his potential retirement.
Speaking with Peter Rosenberg on Cheap Heat, Kingston was asked how long he plans to keep wrestling. He noted that he wasn’t sure, as he emphasized that it’s hard to walk away. Kingston also stated that h’s happy to keep wrestling as long as he’s having fun.
“I don’t know, man. I got a couple years left on my contract. I never say like, ‘Okay, in two years I’m gonna be done.’ We always get on Mark Henry about this because he said that he was gonna retire for 12 years. I feel like every year, he said. ‘This is it, man. I’m gonna be done after this year.’ Then all of a sudden, he comes out of Vince’s office, like, ‘Well, Vince told me that he needed me, so I signed for another five years. I said, ‘Mark, come on, man, you ain’t never retiring.’ So we’d get on him about that. This industry is so unique and so fun, and it’s such a short period of time in our lives that I know that it’s very hard to walk away.
“I think what a lot of people miss about it and being on the roster, at least from what I’ve been told, is they miss the camaraderie in the locker room and all that. Even now where I see the transition happening where myself, Dolph, Miz, Randy, we’re kind of the elder statesmen, and everybody else has gone through NXT. There are people who I didn’t come up with, you know, so you kind of see that natural transition happening. But the camaraderie in the locker room, it’s still there. Once that’s gone, you don’t really get it back. So I’ve always said that as long as I’m having fun, I don’t want to be the guy that comes to work every day and is complaining about being there and ‘Oh, I’m not happy with our storyline and I’m pissed off about this.’ This job is so amazing that you should be feeling elated about it every single day. Obviously there’s ups and downs and whatnot, we all know that. But overall you shouldn’t be coming to work and having it weigh on yourself and you take it home and you’re mad about what’s going on at work, and now the quality of your life isn’t the way that it should be.
When asked whether his New Day stablemates Big E and Xavier Woods pressure him to keep going so the group can stay together, Kingston jokingly described how Woods is actually the veteran of the trio. He also stated that they want to work together on an entertainment platform, even after their wrestling days are over.
“I told them this, and they’re starting to come around. Once you get past 30, it’s all the same age bracket,” Kingston said. “So are they younger than me, or are we all the same age? They might even be older than me. Woods has been working in the industry for a very long time. He’s got about 27 years in the business or something like that. He’s the real veteran of the group. So am I older than him or not. Who’s to say? But yeah, we talk about it all the time. I think, when it’s all said and done, we definitely want to continue to work with each other on an entertainment platform. Whatever that looks like, we’re figuring that out. But we take it one day at a time, and we’ll see what happens when the contract expires, and we’ll cross that bridge when it comes.”
