| Brock Lesnar squashing Kofi Kingston was planned almost immediately One of the most controversial booking decisions over the last few years was set months ahead, per a former WWE writer. Brock Lesnar crushed Kofi Kingston in October 2019 in the Smackdown debut on Fox, also crushing many fans. The reaction following the move, even to this day, was polarizing. Many who defended the move claimed that it was a result of an "underwhelming title reign," however, one WWE writer spoke out on Fightful Overbooked's In The Weeds, and seemed to nix that possibility. Dave Schilling told Jeremy Lambert and Joel Pearl that the decision for Brock to squash Kofi Kingston was the plan within weeks of Kofi winning the title. "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. The writers in the room with me, were always incredibly aware of what we were doing and why it was important," said Schilling. |
