Kofi Kingston was a recent guest on the “Reality Of Wrestling” podcast to comment on WWE’s current boom period and what it’s like to be part of it.
Kingston said, “We’re really blessed to be in this era right now because wrestling is in a really, really special spot. So we’re just doing our part to lift everything up and to keep everything going, keep the momentum going, like you were talking about. Having all these sell-outs is a testament to all the hard work that we’ve put in over the years, and we want to keep it going.”
He continued, “It’s a special time, the people are tuned in, they’re locked in. We want to keep them tuned in and locked in for as long as we can, til the end of time. So we just go out there, we do what we do. We keep on going out and having the best matches, best performances, best promos, best backstages, best everything, and we keep on being the best. By doing that, we keep on lifting the business up, up, up, like a roller coaster.”
CM Punk worked closely with Paul Heyman in OVW prior to joining the main WWE roster.
During a recent edition of the “No-Contest Wrestling Podcast,” Punk commented on the advice he received from the Wise Man at the time.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On working with Heyman in OVW: “I go down to OVW and boom, they put Paul Heyman there. At this point, I can’t learn from Jim Cornette, excited I get to learn from Paul Heyman. I make friends with Danny Davis, who is equally a legend and has done everything. I dedicated myself to learning as much as I can in that window I thought I had until I get fired. That meant Heyman would fly into Lousiville at 9-10 p.m. on a Tuesday, I’d pick him up at the airport, we’d go right to the Davis Arena, and I’d either watch him just write TV and format it, and he did it like it as me making a cup of coffee. He’s doing all this stuff and he slides it over to me, ‘What do you think? What don’t you understand?’ I learned how to format a show, I learned how to time out a show, half second in and out for commercials. I learned all this stuff. ‘What do you think of this idea? What would you do?’
“He starts asking me questions and next thing I know, that’s on the television show. I’m like, ‘Am I writing the television show?’ The business being the way it was, I did not want anybody to find that out. That would have been more heat on me. We’d do TV on Wednesday night and all Wednesday night I’m in this little closet of a room with Danny Davis and Paul Heyman editing the show. I learned how to edit it. They’re sitting and screaming at each other. These two old school dudes, just yelling at each other. I just tried to learn as much as I could. That was my first experience with Paul Heyman.”
On bonding with Heyman over their reputations: “I learned very fast, ‘He’s down here because other people don’t like him either.’ Me becoming a Paul Heyman guy was more of a Scarlett Letter than anything else. ‘We don’t like Punk. Heyman likes him? We hate him.’ It was one of those things where I was kind of confused, but my attitude was, ‘Me? No, you.’ I was very much under the impression, and there is an alternate universe out there where this did happen, where I took all the knowledge I learned in that short amount of time, I got fired, and I went back to Ring of Honor.”
