Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

The year was 2009. Randy Orton was a still young, but established main event level star for WWE when he was booked for a storyline feud opposite Kofi Kingston.

Kingston had been cast as a care free Jamaican good guy. (The gimmick came complete with a faux-Jamaican accent that he actually worked with a voice coach to perfect. According to Kingston’s account on E and C’s Pod of Awesomeness, the coach went for too specific of a regional accent to the point Kingston's voice came across as laughably worse than if he’d just done a more straightforward, stereotypical take on it.) The character had middle of the card written all over it, and yet in late 2009, WWE took a stab at elevating him opposite Orton and seeing what he could do.

We may never know the full truth, but the general consensus among hardcore fans and pundits, never refuted by anyone in the know, is Kingston blew a key spot in a key match with Orton, and that’s what cost him his upward trajectory. Kingston was to set himself up to take a punt to the head--a signature, super-finisher spot for Orton in those days--but failed to do so, messing up the story of the match. Orton, particularly in his younger days, was never known for level-headed responses. He yelled at Kingston loud enough for cameras to pick it up, “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

The insult went beyond what might have been dismissed as trash talk by the commentary team, breaking the fourth wall to show one performer, frustrated with another for flubbing his part.

Nearly a decade has passed, during which time Kingston resumed the originally expected career direction as a consistent mid-card act. He garnered feathers in his cap like spending more cumulative days than any other individual wrestler as a tag team champion, and a signature spot working creative, athletic escapes from getting eliminated in the Royal Rumble. It was a fine enough niche and, if only for his longevity, Kingston was the kind of wrestler who would be remembered and be assured an eventual spot in the WWE Hall of Fame, at a minimum as part of his longest running and most successful team, The New Day, a three man unit with Xavier Woods and Big E.

Woods commented in more than one shoot interview that the mission of New Day was to eventually position Kingston as a world champion. The objective was admirable, and to be fair, New Day did afford Kingston arguably his longest running high profile role for their entertaining antics and tendency to deliver very good tag team matches. But Kingston as a world champion? That still seemed like quite a reach.

It seemed like a reach--if not the stuff of pure fantasy--until two months ago.

Two months ago, Mustafa Ali got hurt and had to be removed from his spot in a six-man Elimination Chamber Match for the WWE Championship. Kingston took his place, not only as a match participant, but in the specific role of plucky underdog who’d more likely than not jump off of something from a great height.

On the last free TV show before the Elimination Chamber pay-per-view, Kingston joined the other match participants in a gauntlet match, and enjoyed an iron man run—lasting over an hour that included pinning the reigning champion. In storyline, the performance established Kingston as an actual threat in the title fight. In reality? Kingston won the hearts of fans who had passed him by a couple dozen flavor-of-the-weeks before, and made him the sudden, surprise sentimental favorite to win the Chamber match.

Kingston didn’t win in the Chamber. He was, however, the last man left standing before Daniel Bryan did win to retain his championship, and further cemented his place as the crowd favorite for his underdog status, his energetic performance, and as something of an informal lifetime achievement award for his eleven underappreciated years on the WWE roster leading up to that moment.

WWE probably expected Kingston to get a positive reaction to these performances, but it’s hard to think that they earnestly anticipated the groundswell of organic crowd support he’d get, to the point of fans chanting “Ko-fi” over live TV broadcasts, and making him trend, individually, on social media for weeks on end.

So it took shape that Kingston seemed destined to at least challenge for, if not actually win the WWE Championship at WrestleMania. WWE has played into real life perceptions with a storyline that includes Vince McMahon’s over the top tyrannical character overtly seeking to squelch Kingston’s hopes. Along the way, Kingston participated in a multi-man tag match that included his old rival, Orton.

Nearly a decade after they first collided, Orton has settled into his spot as a guy who has the credibility to be inserted into the main event picture at will, but more often hangs out a rung lower, working mid-card champions or guys on their way up to or down from the top. At this unexpected nexus point, when Kingston and Orton once again felt totally in place in the ring opposite each other, Kingston offered hardcore fans in particular one of the most satisfying callbacks of the year.

After knocking Orton down, Kingston’s yelled at him, “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” It didn’t make much sense in the context of the story they were telling in that moment--not unlike Orton’s 2009 outburst--but it did represent something special in Kingston as both a well established veteran and a guy who is more in tune with WWE’s die hard fans than most of his fellow Superstars.

By all indications, Kingston cleared yelling at Orton with at least Orton himself, and potentially some level of WWE officials before it happened. Nonetheless, the combination of seeming randomness and deep-seated purposefulness behind the moment made it nothing short of electric.

The end result? Kingston is anything but stupid. If we accept as true the age old adage that luck is when opportunity meets preparation, Kingston is ready for the limelight in a bigger match than anyone may have ever anticipated for him tonight. Win, lose, or draw, we can bank on him having the time of his life at ‘Mania, and that he’ll take us along for that ride.