Ex-WWE Champion Says He Was "Scared To Be Hurt"

This former WWE Champ thought the company would scrap his title win last minute.

kofi kingston wwe champion
WWE.com

Kofi Kingston freely admits that he was sh*tting bricks behind the curtain back at WrestleMania 35.

The then-future WWE Champion was scheduled to beat Daniel Bryan on the pay-per-view, but he was terrified that someone was going to waltz up and say that plans had changed. If anything, Kofi believed that a WWE staffer would tell him that Brock Lesnar was coming out to wreck his title moment.

Kingston told CBS Sports that he didn't stop fretting until after watching the pre-match hype package on monitors backstage. That's when he started to realise that he was legitimately about to go out there, wrestle Bryan and win the biggest prize WWE has to offer.

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Beforehand, Kofi was "scared to be hurt" by last-minute changes. He'd obviously shared some excitement with his family during the build towards 'Mania, and he didn't want them to be disappointed either. The good news? Vince McMahon had no intentions of changing the booking at all.

Kingston knows how things work though - he knows that the WWE boss often switches things around at the last possible second. He didn't want to get his hopes up.

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Lifelong wrestling, video game, music and sports obsessive who has been writing about his passions since childhood. Jamie started writing for WhatCulture in 2013, and has contributed thousands of articles and YouTube videos since then. He cut his teeth penning published pieces for top UK and European wrestling read Fighting Spirit Magazine (FSM), and also has extensive experience working within the wrestling biz as a manager and commentator for promotions like ICW on WWE Network and WCPW/Defiant since 2010. Further, Jamie also hosted the old Ministry Of Slam podcast, and has interviewed everyone from Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels to Bret Hart and Trish Stratus.