All About Sports: Kofi Kingston

Kofi Sarkodie-Mensah(born August 14, 1981), is a Ghanian professional wrestler, better known by his ring name, Kofi Kingston.A series of vignettes for Kingston's television debut began airing on the weekly ECW on Syfy television show starting on December 6, 2007.view During this introduction phase, his videos, the official website, and commentators all made note that he would be the first Jamaican-born person to wrestle for the company. He debuted on January 22, 2008 as a face with a win over local wrestler David Owen.After wrestling sporadic matches, Kingston was involved in his first major match, a 24-man battle royal during the WrestleMania XXIV pre-show with the winner receiving an ECW Championship match, but was eliminated by Mark Henry.Kingston remained undefeated in singles competition in ECW for months and was placed into a feud with Shelton Benjamin at the end of April 2008. After two straight losses, Benjamin got a win over Kingston on the May 20 episode of ECW, ending his undefeated streak.On the June 24 edition of ECW, Kingston defeated Benjamin in an Extreme Rules match to end their feudAt No Way Out in 2009, Kingston won a spot in the World Heavyweight Championship Elimination Chamber by defeating Kane, but was unable to officially enter the match, as he was ambushed by Edge, who took Kingston's place and eventually won the match.

On April 26, 2011, Kingston was drafted back to the Raw brand as part of the 2011 Supplemental Draft. On May 1, Kingston defeated Sheamus in a Tables Match at Extreme Rules to win his second United States Championship, in the process returning the title to Raw. On the June 13 edition of Raw, Stone Cold Steve Austin granted Dolph Ziggler a championship match against Kingston. At WWE Capitol Punishment, Kingston lost the title to Ziggler.Kingston used his rematch clause at the Power to the People edition in a 2-out-of-3 Falls match, which he won by disqualification and Ziggler retaining the United States Championship. On the July 25, Kingston started a feud with Alberto Del Rio after he was defeated by him on RAW. The next week on the August 1st edition of RAW, Kingston saved his friend, Evan Bourne from a post match attack from Del Rio.After receiving a university degree at Boston College, he initially pursued a career in the corporate world. Sarkodie-Mensah decided to drop his business pursuits and opt to go into professional wrestling. Kisean pushed his brother to join WWE and pursue his offer to join. After very hard consideration Kofi joined WWE and was transported to Deep South Wrestling (DSW) while Kisean stayed home and practiced music. Kofi has also mentioned watching Shawn Michaels wrestle in 1996 as an inspiration for his wrestling career.Sarkodie-Mensah began wrestling professionally in 2005, under the ring name of Kofi Nahaje Kingston.Kingston's country of birth was billed as Jamaica because, according to Leslie Goffe of the BBC, "People would be more likely to embrace a person from the land of Bob Marley and reggae music" than someone from Ghana.(This would later be retconned in late 2009 when his character became more serious, with the on-screen explanation being his smiling Jamaican gimmick was paying tribute to the Jamaican culture).