One-half of The SmackDown Tag Team Champions and New Day Member Kofi Kingston was recently interviewed by Newsweek on a number of topics including a very distinct possibility of him retiring from active in-ring competition after his current five-year WWE contract expires.
This is what Kofi Kingston said:
“I’ve definitely thought about that.” “Five years is such a long time away, but you’d be a fool if you didn’t plan ahead. It’s really early to say, but at the end of this five years [it] might be the end of my career, not just from an injury or physical perspective, but just not being home. Being away from my kids is very difficult. We had to go an extra day last week and we had a live event and then media day in Minneapolis, and then we had TLC and then I came home Monday and then back on the road Tuesday. I’m doing the WWE holiday party in Stanford. And then I’ll go back home and come back to New York early on Friday to do a whole bunch of interviews and the live taping.”
“All of that just to say that it’s a lot. And my kids are growing up, and there’s a lot of days that we miss. I’m considering hanging them up at the end of this five-year period, but you just don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen next week, but it has crossed my mind for sure. I’ve been doing this for a long time, over a decade. It’ll be 12 years on television in January, which is crazy to think about, but that’s the reality. You have to be thinking about those things as a family man and as a person in general.”
It was recently announced and made official by The WWE that everyone in The New Day (Big E, Kofi Kingston & Xavier Woods) signed their WWE contract extensions together at the same time and for the exact same terms as a way to show their solidarity. Kingston was asked how important it was for The New Day to sign those WWE contract extensions together.
This is what Kofi Kingston said:
“If you look at the history of factions in our history, there’s always [a thought that] someone is going to turn on the other.” “And we get that all the time on social media. We don’t want to do that in any shape or form. We’ve all been singles competitors before, and we know how strong we are and the special bond that we have. You just don’t see the energy we put forth in wrestling, and we want to preserve that for as long as we can. If that’s broken even just once you’ll become like everyone else.
“Also, we actually like each other in real life, so we want to be a unit and push each other to the top. And there are other ways to do that that don’t involve breaking up. We can all hold singles titles, we’ve talked about that. We never looked at ourselves as just a tag team. We look at ourselves as more of a faction where all three can hold singles titles or one of us can go for the King of the Ring while the other two support. Or two holding a tag championship while the other is holding singles. We are just pushing ourselves as a group, and we’re not just coasting or resting on our laurels. We don’t look at our accolades, as we’re still in the process of trying to do great things. Signing that contract together was very important to all of us because without one of us the group doesn’t exist. There’s something that’s missing. All of us as a unit signing a contract for the same amount, we definitely wanted that to be a thing. We’re glad it’s announced and we’re doing alright.”
