Kofi Kingston on his rumored heel turn and Money In The Bank matches
Kofi Kingston
On his first character’s name: “I had no idea what character I wanted to play. I remember I cut a video for Tough Enough, and I called myself JT Fury. I don’t know what that means (laughter), I don’t know what JT stands for, or what I was furious about. I really had no idea, I just knew I was going to be here [WWE]. I didn’t know in what capacity, or anything like that. I just knew that I could do some pretty spectacular things here.”
On what he thinks about Money in the Bank matches: “The Money in the Bank match is probably one of the more dangerous matches to the point where you see a lot of people crash and burn so much that you almost forget how dangerous it is to get slammed on a ladder, because it’s not all big and impressive. That stuff still hurts. But the thing about it is you just have adrenaline flowing through your body. When Money in the Bank, especially when it was at WrestleMania, it’s like this is it. We have been working all year to get to this point. I know for me, my first time, I really wanted to make an impression. Obviously I wasn’t winning, but I wanted people to leave and be talking about me. So, I wanted to do some things that were never before seen. Which, guys like Edge and Christian, and the Dudley’s, and the Hardy’s, really made that hard to do because they were so good at these ladder matches. To be able to come out with something people hadn’t seen before, it’s always a challenge. I’m pretty confident as a performer that I’ve never gotten really ridiculously hurt or anything like that, so I don’t worry about ‘oh my God, I’m going to fall off this ladder and get hurt.’ If you start thinking about that then you will.”
On what inspires the moves he does in the ring: “I pull from a lot of different things, like what’s cool to me. Kung-fu movies, Japanimation, going back to Money in the Bank, the first year I jumped through a ladder and dropkicked somebody, that is a direct rip off from a Jackie Chan movie. I think it was First Strike, when he’s running around fighting the entire city, and he fights like 50 guys. And he has this scene and he has this ladder that he’s rolling it down and rolling it back up and hitting people. And he plants it down and hits a dropkick through the ladder. And I saw it, and I was like I think I can do that. I pull from all kinds of things. I’m a big student of the game.”
On his rumoured heel turn: “It’s really funny, because I guess there’s a rumour on the Internet right now ‘ah, Kofi’s turning heel” and I’m like whoa, I am? Which is like, I don’t know. I’m always the last one to find these things out, but like I said, I’m very confident as a performer and if that’s the case I’m sure I’ll knock it out of the park. I’m fine with that. Who knows? I don’t even speculate. I don’t know what’s going to happen tonight. So for me to think ahead, about what’s going to happen way down the line, I mean who knows. It’s really up to the fans, to be honest. If I come out, and the WWE Universe all of a sudden starts booing me, and then all of a sudden they don’t like me, therefore I’m a bad guy. I’d have to reciprocate off of that. I don’t know, I guess we’ll wait and see what happens.”
You can watch the video of his interview here.