Kofi Kingston reveals epic WrestleMania 35 plan that got canceled
Kofi Kingston had the crowning achievement of his career at WrestleMania 35 when he won the WWE Championship. He was alongside his two partners Big E and Xavier Woods when it all happened and according to him, things were supposed to go a bit different.
While his entrance was great and had a good pop to it, there was something much bigger planned. Talking on a Q&A episode of The New Day: Feel The Power podcast, Kofi Kingston revealed the epic plans for his WrestleMania 35 entrance:
"Essentially what we were trying to do was come up with something more serious but also kind of pay tribute to the past because there was such a moment that brought so many people together and it only happened because so many people came together. So we wanted to pay tribute to all those people, all the parties involved and we reached out to Wale and to Mega Ran.
He said the way it all came together was "majestic"
That was just so amazing going back and forth and them coming through with a sample of what they wanted and us nitpicking a little bit and sending it back and I even had my mom record an intro in Twi, the native language of Ghana - essentially saying 'Kofi, this is what you've always wanted since you were a kid. Rise up and go get it - now is your time.'. The process of that - I had her record that on Whatsapp, send it to me, had to convert it - sent it to Mega Ran and asked 'Is this okay?' and he was like 'Yeah. It'll be fine'. And the way it all came together was just majestic.
He detailed the plans for how the entrance would have played out:
Going into what we wanted to do for the theme, we were going to dress up in African Warrior-inspired entrance gear and we would come out. And we wanted to have African dancers surround us, doing traditional African dance and we come through the dancers and start vibing with them and we start walking forward. And behind all of us, we would have people of all different ethnicities, body types, shapes, and sizes, old, young, come out behind us. I'm talking like 50 deep. All wearing old Kofi Kingston shirts all the way up until New Day shirts and all the different kinds of shirts we had. We would have them all rep that because it was all of us that came together for this moment. And then, the song, on top of that - you would have the tribal drums, which were a sped-up version of The New Day claps.
"It was still cool, it was obviously an amazing moment and up till now, nobody would have known what it was supposed to be."
Xavier Woods stressed the importance of having every little detail in the entrance from a storytelling perspective and how it was about "Sending him on to get his prize". He expressed how different it is when people don't get the "rocket strap", i.e, a direct push from the company higher-ups.
As to why the entrance didn't work out as planned, nothing was mentioned. We hope we can find out someday.