Eric Bischoff On The Handling Of Kofi Kingston’s Main Event Push
Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for SiriusXM
On a recent episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff and Conrad Thompson covered the debut of WWE SmackDown on FOX in which Eric was the Creative Director for back in October of 2019. The two go into great detail about Bischoff’s experience on such a monumental moment for wrestling when WWE first found itself in a primetime spot on broadcast television. After that, Conrad and Eric took to questions and one of the major topics happened to be Kofi Kingston and his run as WWE Champion.
“When I scroll through the questions here it feels like almost every other one is about Kofi Kingston.” said Conrad. “[Listener] Gil wants to know does Eric view Kofi Kingston as a headliner/main event talent? Was his push to be the world champion too early, too late or right on time?”
Eric gives it much though before answering the latter part of the question, comparing Kofi’s run kind of like Roman Reigns’ push a few years back.
“I think they pushed too hard,” he said. “I don’t think it was too early, but it didn’t feel organic to me. It felt a little too contrived for my taste. That’s just my taste. I need something to be believable in order for me to get really excited about it. I need a story that I can kind of wrap my head around and allow myself to get sucked into as opposed to a pre-manufactured push and I felt like it was a little bit like Roman Reigns a couple years ago. When you try too hard, sometimes you don’t reach a level of success that you’re capable of reaching because it doesn’t happen naturally. You don’t allow the audience to take you there, you’re taking the audience where you want them to be versus allowing the audience to get them there on their own. That’s the easiest way I think I can say it right now without more coffee. So I just think it was a little too pre-manufactured for my taste.”
Eric answers plenty more questions as he and Conrad continue the discussion. You can hear it all below:
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