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One of the most controversial booking decisions over the last few years was set months ahead, per a former WWE writer.

Brock Lesnar crushed Kofi Kingston in October 2019 in the Smackdown debut on Fox, also crushing many fans. The reaction following the move, even to this day, was polarizing. Many who defended the move claimed that it was a result of an "underwhelming title reign," however, one WWE writer spoke out on Fightful Overbooked's In The Weeds, and seemed to nix that possibility.

Dave Schilling told Jeremy Lambert and Joel Pearl that the decision for Brock to squash Kofi Kingston was the plan within weeks of Kofi winning the title.

"I was there in 2019, I was on the home team on SmackDown. The thing that we were the most concerned with and most involved with was KofiMania. That was a storyline that traded on a lot of attitudes about race and ideas about who should or shouldn’t be the champion. I never felt like that storyline was disrespectful. I never felt that storyline was treated in a way where Kofi came off as a ‘token champion.’ That was a great storyline and I’m very proud of the small part I had to play in that. We can debate how it turned out in the end, when he lost to Brock Lesnar, which I found out about in April. We were talking about, ‘the plan is first SmackDown on Fox, Brock is going to come in and win the title and it’s going to be a quick match.’ That’s exactly what happened after I left. That’s the way it turned out. The writers in the room with me, were always incredibly aware of what we were doing and why it was important," said Schilling.

See the full show at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvaWk-M761E&ab_channel=FightfulOverbooked

Comments

Jordan Lassiter

No wonder they put zero effort into making it a memorable reign

Anonymous

I’m fine with kofi losing to Brock but I wish there was a bigger effort into the match.

patchrick

Watching the show yesterday, I was like “wait… April? That’s when WrestleMania happens…” but it also doesn’t surprise me since it seemed like a corporate decision to line up with the new network relationship. Corporations are terrible bookers

Wulf

This makes a lot of sense. Kofi wasn’t supposed to be the plan and while I’m happy they gave us KofiMania, it does look as if they didn’t want to give him a memorable title reign. All for it to end by squashing him and have Brock wrestle a mma fighter with a bum leg for 2 minutes.

patchrick

Are you forgetting about the angle they set up seconds after the match ended? It was an effort to strap the rocket to Cain Velasquez, which obviously made it all worthwhile nope not really you’re right it sucked

thaddperkins

Sounds just like E. If you’re not writing for a person to have a good title reign then yeah it’ll look half assed. That’s another reason I miss the automatic rematch clause for a former champion. Some of the best fueds have been over the title, and if a former champion doesn’t make it a priority to push rematch then how will it take serious?

Anonymous

That moment was memorable for me. For the wrong reasons though.

Geo

It still bothers me to this day how he got squashed

Richman

Just because it was a long term plan doesn’t mean it was good, I also wonder how much minority representation was in those rooms

Anonymous

I mean, I guess that's better In a way but still fucking awful