Kofi Kingston has been WWE Champion since WrestleMania 35, survived The Viper at SummerSlam, and will head into another defense at the upcoming Clash of Champions pay-per-view.
In an interview with Fightful, the champ revealed that he almost had a “Shockmaster” moment — a botch you can never live down that haunts you for the remainder of your career — back in 2009 during one of the most famous moments of his initial feud with Randy Orton: the live, on-screen destruction of a Randy Orton NASCAR. Why Randy Orton suddenly had a NASCAR is beside the point. It ended up working out okay, but at the time made him internally scream, and we’re quoting here, “No! My career! No!”
The moment in question:
If you notice Kofi slipping around a lot on top of the car, that’s not on purpose.
“My god! I talk about that moment all the time. That was a career defining moment for me, people are like ‘oh my god, Kofi Kingston’s not just happy go lucky Jamaican guy, he’s doing some damage to this car.’ I feel like if I would have fallen, it would have been a Shockmaster-esque moment. It was almost slow motion for me. They told me the NASCAR was indestructible. They gave me a crowbar, with the first hit, it broke the window. That wasn’t supposed to happen, but it’s live TV. I keep on breaking it, I go and step, and now I’m on the dashboard. I go to slam (the bucket of paint), and I feel myself falling. It’s like the Matrix. I’m like ‘No! My career! No!’”
“I stuck the pose, and it was really close. It could have went (down) really quick, but it went (up). No multiple cars, no multiple buckets of paint. It was a one time deal. There’s no mirrors, I had to figure out ways to destroy it. I threw a crate into it, I used a crowbar to scratch up the paint job. Luckily it went the way that it was supposed to go and here we are ten years later, me and Randy going out there and doing it.”
At least Kingston had the good sense to attack the window of the NASCAR with a crowbar, and not his bare hands. We’re definitely happy the New Day, Kofi’s WrestleMania moment, and a WWE Championship reign happened instead of a decade of, “remember when that weird Jamaican guy broke his leg and fell off a Randy Orton car?”
