Kofi Kingston on the Importance of Reality in Storylines, Facing Brock Lesnar Tonight

– Kofi Kingston spoke with Sporting News for a new interview promoting tonight’s Smackdown debut on FOX. Highlights are below:

On how the Smackdown move to FOX feels different from other big shows: “This feels different in the sense that it’s probably the biggest ordeal that we’ve had in WWE. For me, at least the last 11 years that I’ve been on the roster, this is huge, man. I think being mentioned in the same breath as the NFL and NASCAR, when you have Sunday football and Thursday Night Football and you have WWE commercials that are airing and people who I haven’t spoken to in probably 10, 15 years are calling me and sending me messages about ‘I just saw you on the football game’ and ‘SmackDown is going to be on Friday nights!’ It’s such a huge reach. I feel like WWE and Fox, the partnership, it goes hand in hand, like a hand in a glove. We’re all about making our shows as big as we can possibly make them. Fox does it all the time with the NFL. We do it with our show. Now, we’re going to be combining forces and it’s going to be bigger than ever. So, to be at the forefront of it all, myself and Brock Lesnar for the WWE championship on Friday Night SmackDown, it’s amazing. This is the opening show, the debut show. The Rock is going to be on it, the guy who started this whole SmackDown movement. He’s going to be here on the show. It’s just crazy. It’s the biggest that SmackDown has ever been and this is the biggest thing that I’ve been a part of since I’ve been a member of the WWE roster. It’s great — it’s awesome.”

On his experience working with Brock Lesnar: “The only time that Brock and I have been in the ring together wrestling one another was the Beast in the East WWE Network special which is about five years ago or something like that. Brock had just come back to WWE after a long hiatus. I had the task of slaying The Beast. Back then, I didn’t do it. I failed. But I’ve grown a lot as a performer. I’ve grown as a superstar, as a competitor. I feel like I’m at the top of my game right now. I’ve conquered a lot of mountains being the WWE champion and Brock Lesnar is the next mountain to conquer. He’s the next one that I have to climb and I look forward to it. A lot of people are worried about it, a lot of people are scared for me. But, for me, I welcome this challenge with open arms. I embrace it. This is what one has to do to be considered in the same echelon as the greatest WWE champions of all time. I look forward to it. I look forward to the challenge. One of my goals has always been to be one of the greatest and be considered as one of the greats. We’re going to find out on Friday. It will be a doozy, as they say.”

On his storylines having a grounded element to them: “As I said, the best storylines out there always hinge on a little bit of reality and I’m very aware of that when I’m thinking about what I’m trying to accomplish in the ring from a storyline perspective, from whatever it is I say on the mic. Especially now, we live in an age of social media where people have a lot of access to not only us as WWE superstars but what might have happen in a story behind the scenes. For example, myself and Randy Orton are on a very real level when I was on the come up, rising through the ranks, trying to get to the WWE championship and get to the main event scene. Randy Orton was a guy who had a lot to do with me not getting through that glass ceiling on a very real level. There were always rumors about whether that was true or not. Finally, 11 years later, we get to address what actually happened. So, for the people who were questioning, now they’re enthralled in what’s happening next because now, despite the fact that this guy tried to hold me down, here I am on the top of the mountain. I hold the greatest, the most prestigious title in all of wrestling. That is what gets people to watch and be interested. For me, that’s what it’s all about. You want to make memories. You want to do things that allow people to feel. People, when they are affected emotionally, that is when they like the product the best and that’s what I’m striving for is to get people to remember and be entertained and be emotionally affected by what it is I do in the ring.”

On if he’s surprised by his long title run: “Yeah, I wouldn’t say surprised by any means because you have to go out for every single performance and believe in yourself and take things one day at a time. I always joke around and say that I’m going to be champion until the end of time. Is that realistic? Probably not, because nobody’s done it yet (laughs). At some point in time, it will have to come to an end. But for the time that you are champion, you just keep on going. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep on marching. That’s what I’ve been doing since April, just going out and trying to have the best matches I can possibly have, having the best performance that I can possibly have and being the best champion that I can possibly be. It’s really all about just taking everything one day at a time and try to be the best every single day.”

On what he still wants to accomplish in WWE: “I always had a silly goal of holding every single title in WWE and I feel like I’m well on my way to doing that. Obviously, the Universal title is one that I haven’t held but also the women’s championships. Now they have women’s tag team championships and I want to find a way to somehow do that because myself, Big E and Woods, we’re really greedy when it comes to gold. Nobody is in the clear from our sights. We want all of them. (The) 205 Live championship, maybe we’ll have Big E cut down to 204, then what? Then we’ve got Big E — will he be Little E or will he just be E? Who knows? We’ve got a lot of things that we want to try to accomplish. It’s just a matter of figuring out a way to do it. But for the time being, the goal is Brock Lesnar at SmackDown on Friday and climbing that mountain and proving a lot of people wrong and the people who supported me, proving them right and doing what we do.”