MVP was a recent guest on X-Pac 1 2 360. During the interview, he discussed why Kofi Kingston’s title win was so important for black representation. Here are the highlights:
On Why Black Representation Matters:
Something that blew me away, it resonated…while we were watching [Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse], my son, who at the time, I don’t think he was four yet, or maybe…yeah I think he was four. He looks at me and says, ‘Daddy, I want to be black Spider-Man.’ And I thought because Miles Morales wears a black and red Spider-Man outfit, at first that’s what I thought, you know? Oh yeah, not blue Spider-Man. But then he said, ‘Daddy, he looks like me. He looks like me. I wanna be him.’ And it dawned on me like, ‘Oh s***, yeah, you do look like Miles Morales.’ So the importance of having role models that you can immediately relate to, is right now in our society sadly, there’s a huge issue of race and this rift, and I remember when Black Panther came out, people were like, ‘Oh what’s the big deal, you guys already had Blade, so what?’ No, you don’t understand. Growing up, I remember the first time I saw Tony Atlas and Rocky Johnson. I went, ‘Oh s***, I wanna be like them.’ Because when we went outside to play wrestling, I was always Dusty Rhodes or Ric Flair or something like that, but to see somebody that looked like me, I went ‘Oh yeah, I wanna be like them!’ And then to see my four-year-old son, who I’ve never had a conversation about race or any of the social issues that plague us today, just to see him see a superhero that looks like him that he can relate to, that was absolutely huge.