10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About The TLC PPV

8. Kofi Kingston's First Major Push Came To An End (TLC 2009)

Kofi Kingston proved to be an exciting WWE superstar right off the bat, and after graduating from the ECW brand to Raw, the sky seemed to be the limit for him. After Kingston captured several championships, his push looked to be beginning in earnest when he began feuding with Randy Orton after having issues with Legacy during the 2009 Bragging Rights match. Orton attacked Kingston on Raw, but the former U.S. Champion fired back, destroying Randy Orton's car to a huge babyface ovation, before giving "The Viper" a Boom Drop from a Madison Square Garden railing through a table. It was an awesome segment that looked set to make Kingston a star. At Survivor Series, Kingston's team beat Orton's, and the young star seemed to have really arrived. After that show, though, his momentum shifted. Orton beat Kingston and left him laying leading into their singles encounter at TLC, and though Kofi did score a retaliatory win with help from Mark Cuban, when the final PPV of 2009 came around Orton pinned Kingston cleanly. That was the first of many abandoned pushes for Kofi, and a sad sign that management was way off the mark when it came to promoting the star.
Contributor
Contributor

Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried. *Best Crowd of the Year, 2013