Brock Lesnar is one of the biggest and most successful wrestlers in WWE history. A big part of his success has come from how he has been presented. For over a decade he has been presented as this exceptional athlete that’s in a league of his own compared to everyone else.
Even Vince McMahon himself once acknowledged on live TV that Brock Lesnar “enjoys special privileges”. And while that line was part of a story, there was a lot of truth to it as well.
Nowhere was this gulf between Brock Lesnar and the rest of the WWE locker room clearer than in 2019 when Lesnar destroyed then-WWE Champion Kofi Kingston in less than ten seconds.
That angle polarized fans when it first took place as many saw it as a “burial” of Kofi despite the success of his storyline as WWE Champion. Other fans have interpreted Lesnar’s one-move squash on Kofi as a desperate hot angle on WWE’s part in order to start the new SmackDown-Fox relationship on the right foot.
As it turns out, this wasn’t some rash decision that came about in the weeks before it happened. According to a former writer for WWE, the plan for Lesnar to demolish Kofi was proposed and put in place within a few weeks of Kofi’s big win.
Brock Lesnar was penciled in to end Kofi’ Kingstons reign months ahead of time
Dave Shilling spoke to Fightful Overbooked’s In The Weeds and explained what kind of mentality was in place surrounding Kofi, Lesnar, and the WWE Championship.
“I was there in 2019, I was on the home team on SmackDown. The thing that we were the most concerned with and most involved with was KofiMania. That was a storyline that traded on a lot of attitudes about race and ideas about who should or shouldn’t be the champion.
I never felt like that storyline was disrespectful. I never felt that storyline was treated in a way where Kofi came off as a ‘token champion.’ That was a great storyline and I’m very proud of the small part I had to play in that.
We can debate how it turned out in the end, when he lost to Brock Lesnar, which I found out about in April. We were talking about, ‘the plan is first SmackDown on Fox, Brock is going to come in and win the title and it’s going to be a quick match.’ That’s exactly what happened after I left. That’s the way it turned out.”
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