Awesome Kong Talks Not Liking Her Ring Name At First, Japan Crowd Reactions
Awesome Kong has not always liked her ring name and has decided to talk about it.
Kong, also known as Kia Stevens, has made a transition from wrestling to an actress as she is featured on the Netflix series “GLOW.” In a recent interview with The Ringer, Kong reflected on why she didn’t like her ring name at first.
She noted that once she went to Japan, picking her name wasn’t an option as she was training in Santa Monica at the New Japan dojo where Shinsuke Nakamura and other people called her Kong.
“I didn’t know if he was just unaware of the connotation that Kong would have for a black person, because he was from Japan, but I got really upset. Then they had to explain to me that they’d recently had a press conference, and that the company that was bringing me over had named me Kong.”
She would go onto say that she went home and considered what she got herself into and if she should go back. She thought about the meaning of N.W.A once she heard a song by the rap group.
This is when she decided that she would make the name her own that way when someone hears it they know what it’s all about.
“Anyone who sees Amazing or Awesome Kong respects that name first. I feel that that’s a goal that my people should always work towards, not a meaning of ridicule or put-down, but always respect. I owned it, and I own it today.”
Staying with her time in Japan, she mentioned how working in front of those crowds made her seem extremely serious as they take pro wrestling serious.
She pointed out how they report wrestling in the newspapers as if they were reporting on baseball and really buy into the magic of wrestling.
“There were people who, when they found out I was a wrestler, they didn’t know anything about wrestling. So when they heard my name, they were like, ‘Oh my god, girl, why would you let them name you that?’ Then I had to explain it to them—that if you’re a fan of wrestling and you hear the name Amazing or Awesome Kong, you sit up straighter.”
