Kofi Kingston’s impressive WWE title reign ended with the thud of a single F-5 from Brock Lesnar. Now the WWE needs to rehabilitate their fallen star.
When Kofi Kingston dropped the WWE Championship to Brock Lesnar in a six-second squash it infuriated a large number of wrestling fans. Now that a little time has passed, fans seem content to see Kingston reprise his role as a happy-go-lucky member of The New Day. The WWE owes Kingston and its fans much more.
The good news for Kingston is that his prominent place in SmackDown promo packages seems to indicate the company’s intention to keep him in the spotlight. The real question is whether or not the company knows how to get Kingston’s career back on track. Simply trotting him out with The New Day every Friday night isn’t going to get that done.
That doesn’t mean The New Day can’t be a vehicle to get Kingston going again. In fact, it’s the perfect way to add some interesting layers to his character. The recent news that Xavier Woods may be sidelined for an extended period of time with an Achilles injury gives WWE writers a unique opportunity to shake things up for the trio.
In the short-term, Kingston and Big E should begin to work a traditional tag team, feuding with one of the heel teams on SmackDown. The identity of the other tag team really isn’t important. The plan should be to use that feud to create friction between Kingston and Big E during the series of matches.
Perhaps, Big E should show a bit of arrogance by chastising Kingston for failing to hold up his end of the bargain. He should even ask the question of whether or not Kingston has gotten soft after losing the belt. Ultimately, the two should end up in a direct confrontation at the pay-per-view of WWE’s choosing.
A long-running confrontation between Kingston and Big E could be a staple of WWE programming for the better part of a year. The two can easily work great matches with one another. The battles between the duo don’t need to headline pay-per-views, but they could easily be reprised two or three times with different stipulations. Solid, high-profile matches between Big E and Kingston could easily turn into one of the best feuds of the year.
The payoff for the conflict would be non-traditional. Instead of one wrestler establishing supremacy over the other in a brutal rubber match, the entire storyline could end with Woods’ return to in-ring action. His role would be to broker peace between his former comrades in arms. That could be done with a combination of Woods’ excellent mic skills and him suffering a beat down or two from a heel stable requiring Kingston and Big E to come to his aid.
In the end, Woods would reunite Kingston and Big E in what would be a highly anticipated reboot of The New Day. They could even top things off by winning the Tag Team Championship one more time.
After all that, the WWE would have rehabilitated Kingston’s reputation well enough to push him into another singles title program. It’s going to take a lot of work, but it’s work worth doing to get Kingston back where he belongs.