Before he became a featured wrestler in ROH, Kenny King got his first taste of the spotlight on Tough Enough season two in 2002. King was one of the standout performers on the show and made it to the final four alongside Jake Sokoloff, Jackie Gayda, and Linda Miles.
Though King was the consensus best wrestler among the four, Gayda and Miles were named the victors with WWE choosing two women instead of a man and a woman, which they had done for season one.
"It was the biggest 'okie doke' because the assumption was there would be one man and one woman, but if you go back and watch that Tough Enough, they never say that one time," King reflected on ROH Strong. "They always say the words 'two winners.' I feel like they were very deliberate in that wording from the beginning. I have it on good authority from a [Vice President] that it was always going to be two girls winning. We went into the competition and I'm thinking, 'All I have to do is be the best guy here.' When the four of us went to Stamford before the finale, I remember some of us bouncing that off each other, 'what if they swerve us?' In the moment, [laughs], my dad was never the biggest wrestling fan. He told me I was gonna be a pro safety and I should spend my Monday nights watching Monday Night Football instead 'garbage wrestling.' I remember sitting there in WWE New York and right after they played my final match, my dad goes, 'Holy shit, you won.' I progressed so far ahead of everybody in the wrestling that I was like, 'I got this shit in the bag.' After watching all four of those matches and seeing who won...it was a gut punch for sure."
King went on to say that not winning Tough Enough was the best thing to happen to him because he knows WWE would have put him on television before he was ready like they did everyone else.
Instead, King moved on to the Independent circuit as he was determined to not be a Tough Enough fluke. He would eventually make his way to TNA/IMPACT and then ROH.
Elsewhere during the interview, King discussed his return to ROH in 2015. You can find his comments by clicking here.
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