MVP Shares Thoughts On Black Representation In Wrestling: “It’s A Very Important Thing”

In a recent interview with YoJoshMartinez, MVP spoke about his experiences in the wrestling industry and shared his thoughts on the value of Black representation within the sphere (per Wrestling Inc). He referenced a well-known video clip of himself and the late Shad Gaspard’s reaction to Kofi Kingston’s triumph at WrestleMania 35 and spoke about the vital aspect of people seeing diverse images of winners throughout the wrestling business. You can find a few highlights from MVP and watch the complete interview below.

On Gaspard’s release of the WrestleMania 35 video: “At first, I was really pissed off at Shad for releasing that video, because I thought that was a very candid moment, and I thought it was something very personal. But when I saw the reaction to the video, and how other people expressed what my reaction and Shad’s reaction were, and how people responded to that, it changed my position and I wasn’t upset about it anymore, because representation matters. It’s a very important thing.”

On what it meant to see Kingston’s win: “Kofi — if I’m not mistaken — was born in Ghana and moved here when he was a small child. He’s a dark-complected Black man with dreadlocks. No one that looks like him had ever held the WWE Championship. So across the country and across the world, there were dark-complected young people, from Africa and neighborhoods across America that said ‘Hey, that guy looks like me. He’s holding up that championship. If he can do it, I can do it.'”