FORT WORTH, Texas — WWE's Super Bowl is coming to North Texas, and you don't have to give a bleep about professional wrestling to fall in love with the beauty of the message of one of its biggest stars.
Kofi Kingston will be a featured performer when WrestleMania returns to JerryWorld for what will be a two-day event this Saturday and Sunday.
Kingston's path to pro wrestling and WWE started when he was an undergrad at Boston College majoring in advertising with a focus on marketing and PR.
This is where he learned the lesson that doesn't come from a classroom, or the standard parental lecture.
"I wanted to go into commercial work, like for an ad agency," he said in a recent phone interview. "So I ended up in Staples headquarters and my job was working on its big catalog, the buyer's guide. I was a proofreader for one the sections.
"I didn't need to go to college, or even high school, to do this," he said. "You just had to be able to read. I had the chairs section, and all the pictures of the chairs had to be facing the inner pane of the book. Like, that was a really big deal.
"When I got the buyer's guide after it was done, I didn't even look at it. The first thing I did was to throw it in the trash. All of this hard work and I'm getting yelled at and I know the fruits of my labor will be people throwing it in the trash."
Sometimes the most important lesson in determining what you want to do with the rest of your life is knowing what you don't want to do.
"I would wake every morning mad that I had to go to work," Kingston said. "Then I'd be mad on my way to work. Then I was mad at work and worrying about products I didn't care about. I'd be mad when I go home because I didn't want to have to go back to work. The cycle kept repeating itself.
"I get the consistency factor, and people have to make a living," he said. "If there is any way you can pursue something that you want to do, you owe it to yourself to try. You can always go back to proofreading."
You may not end up being a WWE star who is adored by millions, but you will never be if you don't actually try.
And when you are done trying, you try again.
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— Mac Engel: Did you play any sports growing up?
— Kofi Kingston: I played football, but I wasn't very good. I was fast, but I couldn't catch because my hands were small.
I wrestled in high school, but when I got involved in wrestling I thought it was WWE wrestling. My friend said, 'You should come out and try out for wrestling. You'll be good.' I am thinking, 'Yeah! I like it.' I go into my first wrestling practice and I think I'm going to be jumping off the ropes, and breaking chairs.
I get into the gym, and it's hot and it's muggy, and so humid. I am thinking, 'This is not what I thought this was going to be.' But I did wrestle, and I loved it. Even to this day a lot of my discipline comes from the foundation I learned from wrestling in high school.
— ME: Do you remember the size of your first paycheck from professional wrestling?
— KK: It was a check for $15. I wrestled for Chaotic in the Northeast. The guy who ran it, not for nothing, he ran a tight ship. He had checks, and he would write a check out to you. It wasn't that much, but I was getting paid to do what I loved. I should dig that check out and frame it.
— ME: What was the smallest venue, or crowd, for one of your performances?
— KK: I went from the [Staples] cubicles to the Knights of Columbus halls and small venues. But the difference between walking into a cubicle, and into an arena was night and day. As dumpy as the crowds or the buildings might have been, they were better than the cubicle.
— ME: The last time WrestleMania came to this area was 2016, when Stone Cold Steve Austin came out with The Rock; Charlotte Flair won her title; and Shane MacMahon jumped all the way down from the top of the cage in 'Hell in the Cell' ... How can this WrestleMania possibly top that one?
— KK: It's the same thing everyone says every time you walk out of a WrestleMania, 'There is no way this can be topped.' We always do.
