What if Shane McMahon is Kofi Kingston’s first challenger for the WWE title?
WrestleMania 35 saw an all-time feel-good moment when Kofi Kingston made good on the last two months of storylines, and his last eleven years as a diligent worker, to emerge WWE Champion. It’s unclear if WWE will push Kingston as a legitimate main event level star moving forward, or if, now that he’s had his moment, he’ll move back down the card to resume the mid-card and tag team work largely synonymous with his career.
Meanwhile, Shane McMahon worked arguably the next highest profile match from the SmackDown brand in a wild brawl with The Miz that culminated in him lucking into pinning The Miz. While Miz was well protected to remain a viable upper mid card or even fringe main event guy, the record will show that Shane-O-Mac pinned him at WrestleMania.
Both Kingston and McMahon could reasonably see their feuds from WrestleMania carry forward for another month or more. If WWE really wants to shake things up, though, Kingston could defend his title against a new challenger, and McMahon is as well positioned as anyone to step into that role.
This article considers: what if Shane McMahon is Kofi Kingston’s first challenger for the WWE Championship?
#3 Shane McMahon has his father’s backing
While the story of Kofi Kingston chasing down a world title shot at WrestleMania largely dominated SmackDown programming over the last month, the story wasn’t just about Kingston vs. Bryan. Indeed, between Vince McMahon taking Kingston out of the Fastlane title match, and then booking him and his New Day brothers into gauntlet matches, the angle had at least equally as much to do with Kingston battling McMahon.
With Vince’s son Shane now positioned as one of the top heel wrestlers on the blue brand, it would make reasonable enough sense for the younger McMahon to get positioned as Kingston’s challenger. It would particularly make sense for his father to go on pulling the strings to continue the story and give his son every advantage in their program.
While Kingston is very little like Stone Cold Steve Austin, there’s a case to be made that he has been about as successful as anyone since the Attitude Era at channeling that style of fight the machine ethos, fighting his way into a championship reign.