Low Ki also confirms his exit from MLW.
2024 is the 26th year of Low Ki’s in-ring career. He’s made his way through WWE, Pro Wrestling NOAH, ZERO1, Ring of Honor, TNA, AAA, New Japan Pro-Wrestling, MLW and various other promotions throughout the course of his career.
He dove into his time with WWE while guest appearing on Café de René with René Dupreé. He went by the name ‘Kaval’ during his time there. He remembers being a part of NXT when it had a game show-esque presentation. He shared that WWE was looking to fire him after he mentioned TNA Wrestling during a freestyle.
He recounted former company CEO Vince McMahon hosting promo classes but Ki feels it was McMahon’s way of finding out if he could test people or not. Circling back to the mentioning of TNA, McMahon asked Low Ki about it in Gorilla Position. Ki expressed to McMahon how badly TNA ‘f*cked up’ with him. After hearing what he had to say, McMahon said, ‘Well alright.’ After that, Ki ran into John Laurinaitis, who was not happy about him mentioning another company.
Nope (it was not scripted when I mentioned TNA during my freestyle on NXT). That was me speaking my mind. The best part about that was I found out from one of the cameramen, who had a headset, after I did that, they were trying to fire me during the commercial break. Vince (McMahon) was on the headsets calling around, asking to see what they could do. So, he was intent on trying to make me look bad. He was intent on trying to get rid of me. But, somebody in the office, they told me, ‘Mathematically, there was no way for me to lose.’ For the entire season of NXT season two, I engulfed 60 percent of all the votes. So, me saying, ‘I’m the only reason for some Total Nonstop Action,’ I was basically doing what Vince said. Because what he would do is he’d have us in these classes in the morning, which he called them promo classes but he was trying to see how he could test everybody according to whatever he felt. Because there was no point to it. There was no direction. There was no application thereafter. But, his words were, and I quote, ‘What’s gonna get people talking tomorrow by the water cooler?’ Okay. Alright. Now that I do what you say, you get kind of pissed off. So, if that’s gonna be the case, one, none of your guys intimidate me. You don’t intimidate me and he knew that. Because I would be the only one who would say, ‘Hey Vince!’ And walk up to him while everyone else was kissing his ass. What he would do to me was he’d pick his phone up and he’d go (wait one second) and walk away. So, I would get him in his office. Because he would always have one area that he would seclude off for an office space and I’d just go in there and speak with him. As long as you speak to him with respect, I never really saw an issue, and he wasn’t really a bully, at least to me — the way that I hear and see from other angles. So, I would go right at him. So after that happened, I heard that they were trying to fire me. Then we do the end of the segment which is the end of the first hour of filming for the day. Now, everyone’s going to the back and we go into Gorilla and Vince calls me over and he goes, ‘What was up with that TNA comment?’ Well, I let him know and I was quite colorful letting him know how badly TNA f*cked up. So, there’s no question. I let him know what the reasoning was for it and all he did was pause for a second, he looked at me, he goes, ‘Well alright.’ That was the end of it. So then, after that happens, I walked down the staircase from Gorilla and now we got John Laurinaitis, and he’s sitting there huffing and puffing, ‘Are you kidding me? Free advertisement?’ This and that. He’s going off and I got my hands behind my back because I’m looking at him, and he’s like, ‘What did Vince say?’ And I go, ‘I explained why. He was cool with it,’ and he goes, ‘…Well, as you know, we can’t give free advertisement.’ Understood. But the thing is these guys get off on intimidation. Where I come from, these guys would get killed. So, this makes no sense and it didn’t make any sense to me because at this point, I’ve already conquered the world by the time I go there, and they treated me like a rookie, when I got more experience than some of their main eventers like Randy Orton at the time. So, you’re treating the public like they’re stupid. I’m treating everyone with respect. So, no, it wasn’t scripted. I was actually working on it on the airplane ride over to that event and at one point on the airplane, I remember Joe Hennig, Mr. Perfect’s son, he was walking in the aisle. Either standing up to stretch or something like that. He looks at me and I had headphones with a beat and I’m working on what I was writing. He looked at me and he kind of gave that pause, like, what are you doing? And I just waved him off like, don’t worry about it.
Low Ki was the winner of NXT season two. As he was speaking on the microphone following his win, he was jumped in the ring by the other contestants. He did not know that was going to happen. When the likes of Kofi Kingston, MVP and John Morrison made their way to the ring to save him, they eventually ended up leaving.
Ki states that he heard referees instructing them to stand down, by orders of Vince McMahon. Ki told the referees that he was going to ‘kill everyone’ when he got backstage. He stated that Charles Robinson was holding him tight as they walked to the back and there were additional people there to stop him from getting to the others.
When he got to the locker room, he said the fellow contestants revealed to him that John Laurinaitis instructed them to not tell him he was going to be jumped.
Speaking of winning NXT, when I won NXT and that was supposed to be my moment, I got jumped by the other seven guys and nobody told me that was coming, which is the reason why I fought back and almost tried to break Titus O’Neil’s arm with an armbar. Because, I got jumped for real on national television. Nobody told me that was coming. The shot that I took to the back of the head almost knocked me out, which is the reason why (I) double leg took down Titus O’Neil, and then there was all this confusion at the end, where you see (John) Morrison, MVP and Kofi (Kingston) rush the ring to try to save me and then all of a sudden, they get in the ring and start attacking the NXT guys who jumped me and then all of a sudden, they leave the ring and can’t enter because the referees are telling them, ‘Vince said stand down.’ So Vince called a hit on me on national television, and everyone’s sitting there watching going, what’s happening? This doesn’t make any sense, and what happened at the end of that was after they ran through putting me in all their finishers — now you gotta understand, I just traveled over 1,000 miles to get here. I’ve been operating for over 10 hours up until this point. Then I gotta wrestle a three-segment match against Joe Hennig and the other kid from Boston, and now it’s the whole energy dump of, okay, I won. It’s over and then now I gotta actually physically defend myself against these guys. So, at the end of that whole scene, all of the referees had to dogpile on top of me and I started pushing all of them up as a pushup and Charles Robinson is the one who saved everybody, because I was telling ‘em, ‘I’m gonna go back there and start killing everyone,’ because of what they did. Now, Charles Robinson was the one in my ear. He was bear-hugging me so hard, he would not let me go and had to walk with me up the ramp — or to the side of the ramp to get to the back and I had a handful of people come up to me to calm me down, and I always remembered that. ‘Okay, asshole. You wanna call out a hit? You sure that’s what you want?’ And the sh*t is I stood quiet because I had to show everybody, look at what’s happening in this company. Nobody wants to believe anything that the wrestlers who leave the company have to say because they think, ‘Oh, they’re just mad. Oh, they didn’t get what they wanted so they’re talking sh*t about the company.’ So instead of opening my mouth and talking badly about the company, I stood quiet and allowed them to show the world what they think about their people.
I went into that locker room after that and the minute I walked into that locker room because they had us squared off from the main roster, there’s only six guys in that locker room because it was only NXT guys and those six dimed out the first one. They go, ‘Oh, he was the one who hit you and Johnny told us early in the day that we weren’t supposed to tell you.’ So the minute I walked into that locker room, all these big dudes were real quick to be like, ‘It wasn’t us.’ They’re doing it to maintain their jobs.
When Major League Wrestling did their relaunch after going on hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Low Ki was announced as a part of their roster. His last documented match for the organization was in 2021. He confirmed that he quietly left in 2022.
Nope (I’m no longer with MLW). I quietly left in ‘22 after the disrespect that I saw aimed at the locker room and the wrestlers on television, and that’s what I won’t tolerate. Especially if I’m the one who helped build and protect those wrestlers and the women and you guys are just gonna try to sacrifice them because you got people in management who are actually unqualified to hold any position, in regards to pro wrestling or any pro wrestling on television. But you’re gonna try to put them in charge? As if these men and women need to be listening to them when they’re completely unqualified. Even historically. So, there’s an incompetence that was willfully allowed. Not only that, I was the one warning everybody about the masks, the P.C.R. tests, all that stuff and I was condemned. Everybody turned their backs on me. Oh, you fast-forward a few years later, guess who was correct? So there’s no apologies coming. There’s no one going, hey, you were right. Thanks for trying to protect us. There was none of that. They all just casually went on as if it never happened. Meanwhile, I’ve been the one trying to protect everybody from real-world stuff for a long time.
As of this writing, Low Ki has wrestled one match in 2024. He stated during the interview that he picks and chooses if he’ll work a show or not depending on the opponent(s) he’s sharing the ring with.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Café de René with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
