Over Now and Then: Jimmy Snuka and Kofi Kingston

If there's one thing that The Wrestler got wrong from a fan perspective, it's the belief that fans would buy Mickey Rourke holding one's fist to your head and limply leaping from the top rope to head-butt an opponent as a legitimate top-draw finishing move. There's little pizazz to it, which is not a condemnation of using regular moves as big time finishers; Randy the Ram just sucked at it.

To really go over, you need to look at Shawn Michaels "Sweet Chin Music," the fact that Jake "The Snake" could get away with DDTing people for 4 decades, or our two wrestlers today: Kofi Kingston and Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka.

Let's get their obvious draw out of the way. They both play high flying, high risk, fast wrestlers while playing up the Islander (Fiji or Jamaica or Ghana or wherever) stereotype. Two Monday's ago, Michael Cole referred to Kingston getting amped up as "going savage," a phrase with enough negative connotation to keep a sociology professor talking for hours. And rightfully so. I guess I was expecting more wrestling stereotypes to have either died out or become cumbersome to fans who have to continue justifying a love for a fake sport. Regardless, both have legitimate claims to their ethnicity at least, and the caricatures painted where never quite at the Chief Wahoo McDaniel level (though, again, he was one of the few actual American Indians playing an American Indian angle). I guess the intrigue of making someone "exotic" is a real human draw no matter when, and I guess the best you can hope for when someone is playing heavily on their ethnicity is that they're doing it out of pride. (Even if someone would argue that they're doing it wrong; I can't answer that.)

But a big 'screw you' to Michael Cole for keeping that "savage mode" thing around. It does make one wonder, for the sake of pushing someone over, if it is Cole or his character saying it. I mean, Cole's a pretty predominant heel as an announcer, so there's always that chance that he says things like that to reinforce that his tainted worldview would think of Kingston that way. Maybe a comment like that, had it been said in the 80s or early 90s, would be considered an allure of the exotic whereas now it is an ignorant man's world view that the fan is supposed to become angered by.

Maybe I'm giving wrestling too much credit.

But I've talking about it longer than I'd hoped to, already. As my hero Debbie Reese taught me, things like this are important discussions, and the point of bringing them up isn't to accuse anyone, but rather to evaluate. She's a genius at handling the evaluation of identity issues, and I am not. I think it's important to note that, years apart, it's an aspect they both used to build heat, as well as many others in the wrestling business. It doesn't make me like these two any less.

But as I indicated earlier, I'm hoping to link some things a bit more less obvious.

Like the fact that Kingston's finishing move is kicking someone in the face.

Rey Mysterio's 6-1-9 has all of the acrobatics in the world, including a need to articulately force his opponent to land on the second rope before the move begins. Kingston can do his move at almost any time. There's a bit more pizazz to the Tornado kick than "Sweet Chin Music," with the spin and all, but you can see that it isn't as intricate as a figure-four, power bomb, or even the RKO. But I've witnessed at least three occurrences of audiences leaping out of their seats in unison at the sight of a Kingston kick. The move's got pull.

Superfly also did what any other wrestler could attempt numerous times a match. In addition to his Superfly Kick, his more famous finisher, the "Superfly Splash," was jumping off of the top rope. His throwing up the "I love you" sign to show appreciation to the crowd was much more direct than the Ram amping up, and his ability to leap high was insane. Add to that a sticking out of the tongue, a flailing of the limbs, and the drama of all that hair following him, and you've got quite the show-stopper.

The crowd interaction really sold Snuka's moves and helped put him over, and Kingston carries on the fan interaction with call and response. If you can get 10,000 people to scream "BOOM!" with you every time you stomp a foot, clap your hands, or land a punch, then you know you're over, and over well.

But I don't think that Kingston is being set up to ascend like he should for as over as he is, which could limit him, and I don't think he'll get the legacy that Snuka did. Imagine this: Snuka was brought back in the early 90s to put over a bunch of young superstars, namely The Undertaker and his Wrestlemania winning streak.

At that point, after a decade of superstardom and incredible matches, they brought him back to be completely destroyed. To know that a legend could be demolished so easily and so quickly really helped the Undertaker's angle. Now imagine them doing the same with Kingston in 2015: He's just not there yet. And unless he picks up a belt again soon, I think he might not make it to that point. Mysterio? He could do that, and I'd argue he's about comparable with Kingston as far as popularity goes.

It will likely never be associated within the WWE or many historical comparisons, but evaluating where Kofi Kingston sits today reveals an awful lot about just how legendary Jimmy Snuka is.