On the road to WrestleMania 35 business picked up for Kofi Kingston as KofiMania started running wild. Ultimately Kingston went on to defeat Bryan Danielson on the Grandest Stage of Them All to win the WWE Championship for the first time in his career. People really seemed to get behind Kofi Kingston as he pursued the title, but he ended up dropping it months later to Brock Lesnar when The Beast Incarnate defeated him in just a few seconds.
Brock Lesnar’s win over Kofi Kingston has been highly debated over fans since it happened in 2019, but it sounds like it was planned out months ahead of time. Fightful recently spoke to former WWE write Dave Schilling explained that while Kofi dropped the belt to Lesnar in October of 2019, the title change was already planned in April.
“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 shouldn’t be the 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.’ That was a great storyline and I’m very proud of the small part I had to play in that.
We can debate 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.”
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