ROH Star Says Early Tough Enough Season Was Rigged

WWE’s Tough Enough show has been pretty hit and miss with its winners. A number of the show’s winners never even made it to television, much less have any success. However, a former contestant has now claimed that his season was rigged to have two female winners.

Kenny King competed on the second season of the show and wowed people with his progress. He made it to the final stage before a winner was chosen only to be a runner up. Instead, Jackie Gayda (AKA Miss Jackie) and Linda Miles (AKA Shaniqua) won the season, earning the WWE contracts. King has now reflected on his experience on the show and revealed that an executive told him that two women were always going to win the show. Here is the quote from ROH Strong, courtesy of Fightful:

“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. 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.”

Neither Gayda nor Miles continued their wrestling careers after leaving WWE. King, however, has competed on the indies, Ring of Honor, and Impact Wrestling. To date, he is one of the more successful contestants in Tough Enough history.

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• Kenny King
• Tough Enough
• ROH
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