wrestling / News

Kofi Kingston Says Match With Bobby Lashley at Money in the Bank Is a Positive Step For Representation

July 16, 2021 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas

Kofi Kingston is set to face Bobby Lashley for the WWE Championship at Money in the Bank, and he talked about the importance of that representation in a new interview. Kingston appeared on the Battleground Podcast and talked about the match, noting that having two African-Americans competing for the Raw brand’s top title is a “beautiful thing.”

“I hadn’t really thought about the situation [and] having two African Americans going up for the WWE Championship,” Kingston said (per Fightful). “I mean, it wasn’t so long ago that we’d never had an African-born WWE Champion and the amount of African American Champions that we had was really limited,” Kingston began. “ Now, we’re at a point where you have two African Americans going up against each other wrestling for the WWE title. So, I think it’s both a step in the right direction, for sure, and it’s a marker of pride because I think that representation and incredibly important for people who are watching television to see people that look like themselves doing incredible things and to motivate them to go on and do more incredible things because it’s one thing to say anything is possible, but it’s one thing to see it and believe it because it’s happening. I think we both take a lot of pride in that role and the potential motivation of several African American youths — or really, people from any background, seeing that this is happening right now. So it’s definitely a step in the right direction and it’s what we want to be prevalent in the industry. Here we are and for me and Bobby to be at the forefront of it, I think that’s a great thing. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Kingston and Lashley will square off at Money in the Bank this Sunday on Peacock in the US and WWE Network everywhere else.