Kofi Kingston & Randy Orton Reference 2009 Controversy In Smackdown Main Event

Kofi Kingston was announced last night as Daniel Bryan’s opponent at Fastlane. His booking over the last couple of weeks has reminded some of the time from nearly 10 years ago when he also appeared to be in line for a major push. As it turns out, Randy Orton and Kofi Kingston may have referenced this time from 2009 last night.

In 2009, Kingston looked to be a breakout star. There are rumors his push was stopped after Orton was less than pleased with his performance during a match on RAW, however. Last night on Smackdown, that incident was referenced during the main event 6-man tag.

A user on Twitter put the two events back to back:

2009 – Randy Orton going "Stupid Stupid Stupid" after the RKO.
2019 – Kofi Kingston with a callback to that after a closeline.#SDLive #KofiMania

— Kelsey (@iAmKelsey91) February 20, 2019

Randy Orton “liked” the above Tweet.

Tommy Dreamer commented on Edge and Christian’s podcast about Kofi’s lack of a push that year. He said it still bothers him.

“I am still angry about a few things in professional wrestling,” Dreamer said. “Great things which were either dropped or messed up. One of them being when Kofi Kingston send Randy Orton through the table at Madison Square Garden and they never went full board with it, am still upset about that”.

When asked about the incident from 2009, Kingston told Smack Talk Radio in 2012 he wasn’t too bothered by it. He said much of what Orton was doing was being in-character at the time.

“Everyone knows Randy kinda has an attitude,” Kingston said. “So that’s Randy being Randy. What everyone doesn’t remember is that we were in a heated rivalry so a lot of what you saw was him being his character and him kinda playing to that.”