Check out the video of our interview with Kenny King at the bottom of this page!
Ring Of Honor star Kenny King is about to reach a huge career milestone that very few people who choose to embark on a career as a professional wrestler are able to reach. The 20th anniversary of King's professional wrestling debut is imminent, and when it arrives, his status as an industry veteran will be well and truly cemented. "It's crazy to bink and get that 'veteran' tag," King said of the impending anniversary during a recent chat with TheSportster. “It’s a testament to surviving. I mean, how many people really survive 20 years in the business?"
Kenny King, The Coach
King admittedly wears his veteran badge with honor, especially in his role as head trainer at the FSW wrestling school in his adopted hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada. "There's a lot of guys who are really starting to peak and who are starting to get a lot of fame that I've got my hands on," King said, referring to former proteges of his sich as IMPACT's Chris Bey and WWE Superstar Karrion Kross. Imparting knowledge is something that King finds fulfilling, but his own journey is far from over.
"The business is evolving. The business has changed," King said of his own desire to continue learning. "There are some things that I was taught, and those rules don't apply anymore," he continued, adding that he pays attention to what the younger guys are doing. "It's keeping me young. It keeps me thinking about how I approach my business."
Kenny's been wrestling professionally for so long that he finds it difficult to take a step back and enjoy matches as a fan. “The curse is, when you do this for a living, you no longer watch it as a fan because you have to -- if you wanna get better -- you have to analyze every aspect of it,” he said, before adding that the current generation of young wrestlers make it much easier for him to disengage the coaching side of his brain and just enjoy the art form. “It is possible because this era of pro-wrestling is completely out of control as far as the athleticism and storytelling."
X-Division Champion
Of course, longevity is just one of King's many accomplishments in the business of professional wrestling. On his journey to becoming a 20-year veteran of the game, King has picked up a few championships across several different promotions. Arguably the most notable of King's title victories went down in 2013 when he defeated the legendary Rob Van Dam for the IMPACT X-Division Championship. Needless to say, defeating RVD for a title that is more prestigious than many give it credit for was a big deal for Kenny, and the significance of the moment wasn't lost on him.
“I was a gigantic ECW fan,” he admitted. “Rob Van Dam is one of the people I patterned my style after. A hybrid martial artist-athlete-kinda high flyer. He was always one of my favorites. So being in that position to not only beat Rob Van Dam but beat Rob Van Dam for the X-Division Championship,” he continued. “It was a two-fold surreal moment for me.”
Forbidden Doors, Forbidden No More
King parted ways with IMPACT in 2015, but in the world of professional wrestling, very few doors are permanently closed -- even the forbidden ones. Historically, Ring Of Honor has worked closely and shared talent with companies like New Japan Pro Wrestling and British indie promotion RevPro, and the company does allow some of its roster members to take occasional independent bookings, but lately, they've kept a distance while promotions like New Japan, IMPACT, and AEW work together. "It’s never really been a thing in wrestling where you had so many promotions openly working with one another,” he said. “And it’s all for the greater good of the pro-wrestling industry.”
King himself is open to the prospect of ROH joining the fray and partnering with other promotions, as long as the arrangement is mutually beneficial. “There’s never been a better time to do it. But any relationship we have has to leave Ring Of Honor better off than we found it,” the current Ring Of Honor Tag Team Champion said.
Trish Adora And The ROH Women's Division
Forbidden doors aside, Ring Of Honor currently boasts an impressive roster that continues to get better. Recently, the company confirmed the signing of highly-rated independent star Trish Adora, who King admires. “Trish Adora is a huge get,” he proclaimed, emphatically. “She caught my eye with the buzz around Lariet Tubman, which I think is the most amazing name for a finisher. I’ve said to her ‘I’m sick to my stomach that I didn’t think of it!’”
Adora joins an ROH women's division that is currently undergoing some exciting changes. “It’s not gonna be an afterthought,” he says of RoH’s burgeoning women’s division. “The women you see wrestling in Ring Of Honor are gonna be just as good as the men -- which is the industry standard these days. There isn’t a women’s division in pro wrestling where you can hide pretty girls in costumes anymore. All these women have to be able to go, and they can, and they do," he added.
Kenny King Has Always Been Tough Enough
Kenny King made his in-ring pro-wrestling debut in 2002 on an episode of the WWE reality TV competition Tough Enough, on which he was a contestant. In that match, King went one-on-one with Chavo Guerrero, a man from a famous family of professional wrestlers who had been wrestling for more than a decade. It was a baptism by fire only the religion was professional wrestling.
"I felt like from the very beginning, I just picked it up," King said of his time on the show. "There's certain technical things about the footwork, and you have to develop a body callus at first from just being thrown around so much, but everything else -- I just feel like they threw me in the water and I picked it up immediately," he added.
King said that the only area in which he lacked confidence during his Tough Enough experience was his size. King's is six feet tall, but his fellow contestant Matt Morgan was almost a whole foot taller, and there were a few other contestants who were larger than King, but none of that mattered. King's determination, fighting spirit, and raw athletic abilities saw him all the way to the very end of the competition. Ultimately, two female competitors were crowned joint winners of Tough Enough's second season meaning King had to settle for runner-up alongside Jake Sokoloff. But while Jake quickly left the wrestling world behind and faded back into the real world, Kenny continued to pursue his passion and eventually made a name for himself. With a resume to back it up, Kenny King has proven that he's always been tough enough.