Kofi Kingston won the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 35 in 2019 and held it for a few months until eventually losing it in a squash match against Brock Lesnar at the first WWE Friday Night SmackDown on FOX.
A new report from Fightful Select indicates that WWE decided on this outcome months ahead of time. Former WWE writer Dave Schilling joined Fightful’s ‘In The Weeds‘ show to discuss the decision. He said “I was there in 2019, I was on the home team on SmackDown. The thing that we were the most concerned with and most involved with was KofiMania. That was a storyline that traded on a lot of attitudes about race and ideas about who should or should not be champion. I never felt like that storyline was disrespectful. I never felt that storyline was treated in a way where Kofi came off as a ‘token champion’.”
Continuing on, Schilling provided insight on the decision for him to drop the title the way he did. “We can debate about how it turned out in the end, when he lost to Brock Lesnar, which I found out about in April. We were talking about, ‘the plan is first SmackDown on FOX, Brock is going to come in and win the title and it’s going to be a quick match.’ That’s exactly what happened after I left. That’s the way it turned out.”
Many people who defended the move claimed that it was done because Kofi had an ‘underwhelming title reign.’ However, Schilling disagrees. He said “The writers in the room with me were always incredibly aware of what we were doing and why it was important.”
You can watch the full show at this link. Thanks to Fightful for transcriptions of the show.
