10 Ups And 7 Downs From WWE Extreme Rules 2019

2. Kofi Escapes With His Title

This is a hard one to verbalize, but you can’t help but think that Kofi Kingston’s run as WWE Champion is nothing more than a placeholder.

After defeating Samoa Joe Sunday night, Kofi netted his sixth televised defense, also beating Kevin Owens, Dolph Ziggler, Daniel Bryan and Sami Zayn along the way. While those are all solid wrestlers, none of those men really were top guys at the time of their title shots (save for Bryan, who was the champ before Kingston, but took a month off before getting his rematch).

The match against Joe was fine, but unspectacular. And that’s really a great way to describe this reign. Owens turned heel to get his shot and promptly lost, and now he’s turned into the anti-hero, Stunnering Shane McMahon. Ziggler came back from months away to lose twice to Kofi, and he jobbed out to KO in 20 seconds at Extreme Rules. Bryan just lost the tag titles. And Zayn has lost nearly every match since returning.

So it’s not like Kofi has been defending against Murderers’ Row here. And he’s not winning in convincing fashion, as he was on the ropes for much of his match against Samoa Joe Sunday night but yet never felt like he was in jeopardy.

Again it’s an odd feeling, but it also can’t be ignored.