Kofi Kingston…the Milli Vanilli of the WWE!

I used to love wrestling when I was a little kid, especially GLOW, the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. It used to come on Saturday mornings, and my sister and I would cheer and shout in our pajamas for Mt. Fiji and Little Fiji, like two little banshees! It was great…but yeah (heavy sigh) I know, it was fake. Which brings me to the issue at hand, last week my husband (who still happily watches wrestling) mentioned to me that the WWE has a Jamaican wrestler, I was like “Really?” I immediately made a mental note to make a post about it this week, and put it on my mental backburner until today, when I read this BBC article. I immediately busted out laughing and called my husband to my laptop to break the “bad news”.

The latest World Wrestling Entertainment wrestler is 26 year old Kofi (Kofi Sarkodie-Mensah) Kingston, and his WWE bio states that he is “hailing from the tropical climate of the Caribbean Sea” and is a “Jamaican superstar”…oh really Mr. Kingston? That’s not what your momma said! Truth be told this man is from Africa, Ghana to be exact and is no more Jamaican than Vince McMahon himself.

Kofi was actually born in Ghana and his family migrated to the US in 1982. He hails from a family of intellectuals, and some of the family is not so understanding of his profession or his denial of his African heritage. His mother recently confirmed (to Kofi’s dismay, he has since banned his family from speaking to the media), that he is not Jamaican and is quoted as saying,”I told him: ‘Kofi, your cousins watch you on TV in Ghana and want to know why you don’t say you’re from Ghana,’” she says. “He said: ‘Tell them it is business.’”

The WWE’s justification for all this nonsense is, “Most wrestling fans have probably never heard of the West African country, so the wrestling body decided fight fans would be more likely to embrace a wrestler from the land of Bob Marley and reggae music.” Say what! Who hasn’t heard of Ghana??? And if you haven’t, get a dang map! This is pure commercialism at it’s finest( surprise surprise)! Marley clan you better watch out, the WWE is trying to pimp out your family name! (O.K., so I’m being sarcastically dramatic)

And as if this isn’t enough, check out his entrance video. Oh who is that I hear singing? Could it be Collie Buddz (the song is called S.O.S.)? Awww Collie what were you thinking? Tsk, tsk, this is the equivalent of a reggae artist rapping the intro to a Ms. Cleo commerical! LOLOLOL! I hate to say it, but this is going to hurt your credibility, and we all know how hard you had to work to get it as a non-Jamaican reggae artist. I’m hoping you didn’t know that he was an impostor, but nothing rings an alarm like fake patois, right???

I’m sure Jamaicans are flattered (and Ghanaians equally disappointed), that Kofi and the WWE thought it fitting to promote their country, but I think it would have gone over a lot better if they ACTUALLY hired a TRUE JAMAICAN! Why isn’t being an African good enough? Kofi is the first African WWE wrestler after all, and according to his record, he’s a good one too, is that not a great milestone?

What do you think? Should Kofi come clean and rep Africa, or is it as he put it, “business”?

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