Former WWE Writer Reveals Brock Lesnar's Squash Win Over Kofi Kingston Was The Long-Term Plan
Brock Lesnar vs. Kofi Kingston was supposedly planned months in advance
Although it has been several years now since Brock Lesnar crushed the dreams of Kofi Kingston, defeating him to win the WWE Championship in under 10 seconds back in 2019, it seemed very much the consensus that this decision was made to spike a rating upon SmackDown’s debut on FOX, and to build a Saudi Arabia match between Lesnar and Cain Velasquez. It has emerged that this wasn’t necessarily a quick decision though.
Former WWE writer Dave Schilling has revealed that Lesnar beating Kingston was always the plan. When on In The Weeds with Jeremy Lambert and Joe Pearl, Schilling discussed KofiMania.
"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. The writers in the room with me were always incredibly aware of what we were doing and why it was important.”
Kingston originally won the WWE Championship from Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania 35 before going on a six-month run as champion before getting controversially squashed by Lesnar.
H/T Fightful
