It occurred to me that Kofi rarely seems to be without a title, and after some shoddy mathematics, i came up with some numbers.
Bare in mind that these are rinkydink approximations, but for his 1730-odd days since his debut in 2008, he's had a title around his waist for 745ish days. And with his current IC title, he is constantly working at improving his percentage, where he could get to the point that for his entire tenure in WWE, he could've been a champion 50% of the time.
Impressive for someone perpetually stuck in seemingly the same spot, yet maintaining excellent crowd response and high quality matches with near everyone he works with.
I guess it begs the question, where's he heading? Finally gonna break on through the ceiling? Maintain this spot for his entire career and just keep collecting midcard titles? Or is an inevitable slide in his future?
Honestly, i can't really see the last one coming, seeing how he's done so well for so long without being spectacular, but the guy definitely has something.
Anyway, food for thought.
Oh, and for the record, here's the title history, just in case someone cares (or i've shanked it badly and you wanna point that out too
Kofi debuts jan 22nd 2008 ECW IC Title 29th jun 2008 - 17th august 2008 Tag Titles 27th Oct 2008 – 13th December2008 USA Title 1st Jun 2009 – 5th Oct 2009 IC Title 23rd May 2010 - 6th Aug 2010 IC Title 7th Jan 2011 - 25th March 2011 USA Title 1st May2011 - 19th Jun 2011 Tag Titles 22nd Aug 2011- 15th Jan 2012 Tag Titles 30th April 2012- 16th Sept 2012 IC Title 16th Oct - present and counting.. 7th Nov 2012
Three oinkers wearing pants, a plate of hot air, a basket of grandma's breakfast and change a bull to a gill, got it.
He's the Rey Rey successor they seemed to have thought Sin Cara could be. Also, with Evan Bourne and John Morrison gone, Kofi has the athleticism and experience to get the main-event push, unlike Kidd and Gabriel. He could be maxed out, though, if the IC reign fails to boost him back into the main event.
I like Kofi. The kids like Kofi. The Lovely Mrs. Tracker ADORES him. He can work with pretty much anyone. His eternal Ziggler feud helped both guys hone their ringwork.
"To be the man, you gotta beat demands." -- The Lovely Mrs. Tracker
Kofi Kingston has never done anything for me. I either turn the channel when he shows up, zone out, multi task, take the dog out or something like that. I honestly can't think of one memorable Kofi moment.
He's clearly has the company behind him so he must be not only a good guy but also a good company man. There are just a lot of other guys I have been more interested in that have passed through over the years that I would have liked to have seen get the Kofi spot like Shelton Benjamin, Drew McIntyre, D'Angelo Dinero, Jack Swagger, Paul London just about anybody really.
I don't think he really does anything well. If they wanted to do something like give him the Nickelodian Kids Title or something and have him wrestle on Saturday Mornings I'd be okay with it. Somewhere Koko B Ware is wondering why he had to wrestle 20 years earlier.
Kofi's an interesting case in that their inertia with him could theoretically have been good for him in the long run. At the moment, his circling around the IC and tag titles seems listless, because it was.
But for a guy his age, he's had a perfectly fine rate of ascension. We've seen what pointless world title runs have done to Ziggler and Swagger, and how a guy like Sheamus has already achieved everything he could want to do. But Kofi winning the World/WWE title would still be a huge moment for him and a major goal. Just getting a real title shot would still be a big moment, which could make him unique on the entire roster. Again, I don't think they've done it on purpose at all, but it feels like he and Barrett are the only guys who could make anything out of a title chase that we haven't seen before.
What's been missing for him, though, is a program with Punk. Now that Punk's a heel, a short feud with Kofi just feels like a natural thing that should have happened to remind people that Kofi could get the big title and see if he still gets the reaction he did vs. Orton a few years ago. Punk vs. Kofi at the Royal Rumble seems like the exact right main event for that show if they didn't already have The Rock slotted in there (and didn't want to lose whatever elimination spots Kofi will try in the Rumble proper). As it is now, I think they'd be smart to tease him as the possible Rumble winner who gets eliminated last like they did with Santino two years ago, to both test the reaction and set him up as a potential spoiler for one of the Chamber matches.
I always considered it clever booking of the WWF to at least make sure ppl knew who #30 was going to be. That way the crowd & viewers knew that the final guy just entered and it was getting serious now.