A warning for WWE: Don’t tease “KofiMania 2” for heel heat

Even on a television show with the “we’re making this up as we go along” vibe that WWE Raw often has, few people expected to see Kofi Kingston collect two huge victories over Randy Orton and WWE Champion Bobby Lashley on the May 17 episode of WWE’s flagship show.

Of course, those wins came with some caveats — Kingston won both matches via surprise rollup pins and outside distractions as a means to “protect” Orton and Lashley in defeat, respectively — but as they say, a win is a win, and those two W’s have gotten plenty of fans excited about a possible renewed push for the former WWE Champion.

Apparently, people in WWE have taken notice of this:

There is nothing wrong with a company teasing the possibility of doing something that would bring joy to many fans. However, this is WWE, a company that enjoys dangling that potential for happiness in front of those fans before yanking it away at the last second and crushing it right in their face.

The idea of Kingston returning to the WWE Championship picture is an exciting one, if for no other reason than giving the viewers a slight reprieve from another Lashley/Drew McIntyre match, but WWE needs to tread carefully if they go this route.

WWE cannot merely use the idea of “KofiMania 2” to get heat.

For a company that purports to “put smiles on people’s faces”, WWE certainly loves to put heat on heels, often to the detriment of the babyfaces on the roster. This isn’t always the case, as McIntyre’s reigns as WWE Champion and Bianca Belair’s current run as SmackDown Women’s Champion show, but for every one of those moments, you could name two or three instances of:

• losing via distraction or outside interference to the same wrestler multiple times
• losing in their hometown
• asking for a big stipulation match and losing

WWE often books those scenarios to make fans further dislike the on-screen antagonists, but fans today understand how the sausage is made in the company, and as such, will direct their animosity toward the people who created the substandard final product instead of the conduits for it.

This gets worse when fans sense a clear case of trolling. Take how WWE booked Kingston during his initial run to the WWE Title. Yes, the creative eventually paid the story off with a heartwarming conclusion, but it took sitting through weeks of them pretending to give Kingston chances to get a title match and scripting something to cost him that shot at the last minute to get there. The fans didn’t like it, but no one sat around holding that against Daniel Bryan (the heel WWE Champion at the time) or the on-screen personas of The McMahons; they knew it was the result of lazy writing. The same could be said for how the writers had Brock Lesnar squash Kingston in seconds to end the WWE Title reign.

Look, no one’s saying that Kingston needs to beat Lashley for the WWE Championship; Lashley himself needs a lengthy reign to cement himself as a main eventer. However, that doesn’t mean Kingston’s introduction into this featured storyline should amount to little more than “guy who gets destroyed to juice up the inevitable Lashley/McIntyre rematch”.

The company has a chance here to re-establish Kingston as a legitimate championship contender after sending him back to the tag team ranks and treating his time as champion as an anomaly for the last year or so. It wouldn’t mean as much as Kingston winning the belt again, but showing that he’s an ever-looming threat to take it back would be the next best thing.

Plus, it’s much better than pulling the rug from under the fans…….again.