WWE stars The New Day (Kofi Kingston, Big E, and Xavier Woods) recently took to their podcast, “Feel The Power,” to talk about several professional wrestling topics.
Here are the highlights:
Big E on how The New Day members were initially booed:
I thought, ‘Alright, I don’t know if he who shall not be named will let us turn heel, but people care. They may not like us, but they feel a certain way.’ So, they were making noise. We know the issue is if people don’t care, if they’re not making noise, when you come out, ‘Oh. It ain’t working.’ So, it wasn’t working in the way it was intended to work, but it was something we could use.
Kofi Kingston on how he reacted to it:
I think in a roundabout way, we wanted to be bad guys anyway. So for me, it was kind of messed up because I said, ‘We want to be bad guys, but we didn’t have this vision in mind. And the fact that we were getting to be bad guys made me very happy.’ But at the same time, the way the people were rejecting us pissed me off because we were worked so hard to get here, you know what I mean?
And I know we say it in interviews a lot, but you have no idea how hard it is to fight and get put on television as a group. And the way that we did it to come into work, enduring flak, people laughing at us, people making fun of us in the writer’s room, some people on the roster, and now the people that we’re doing this for, you know, are coming out and rejecting us.
I thoroughly enjoyed when people would tell us that we sucked because then I would just turn it up. ‘Oh, we suck?!’ Like I have a tendency to do that too, and i got this from you. So, this was actually in Europe where like everybody in the crowd is cheering, and you have like one person going, ‘The New Day sucks!’ I’m like instantly over to you, ‘Oh, we suck?!’
Then the crowd is confused because 99 percent of the people are cheering us, but this one dude who’s like saying something, I’m turning up for him just to piss him off. So, that’s kind of what this whole scenario was where people were rejecting us and giving us what we wanted, but I didn’t want you to give it to me like that.
Big E on hearing The New Day sucks chants:
And actually, we’re recording in Philly right now, where it was the Royal Rumble pre-show, we worked Cesaro and Kidd in 2015 in Philadelphia in the same building we’re in right now. And that was one of the moments where we got that very loud, massive ‘New Day sucks!’ chants. And we’re supposed to be babyfaces, and we’re not getting the reaction we’re supposed to.
I think it was during our entrance or afterwards where the three of us are all in the ring, we’re all looking at each other, and there’s a real moment of anger because we worked so hard to get on TV, but we also know that this isn’t good. We know that the three of us are talented. We feel very strongly in the bond as a trio. And we know it’s not good, but at the same vein, we worked so hard to get on TV.
Y’all talk about people being underutilized, and how you want to see talent like us be used in a better way. And finally we’re being used, and this is the reaction we’re getting? That was a real moment of real anger. And maybe some of it was misdirected. Maybe some of the anger should’ve been directed elsewhere and not at the fans. But it was a very frustrating time because it’s easy to look back now, and we’ve made it but we’ve been together for five years.
We’ve done a lot of really cool things. It’s easy for us to say now it wasn’t that big of a deal, but at the time, when we’re really in the sink or swim mode and thinking, ‘If this doesn’t work, I might be sent back down to NXT or fired.’ Who knows? It was a moment of desperation.
Xavier Woods on what would make him angry over it:
I was getting fired. I was getting totally fired. Yeah, and that’s one of the reasons I would get so hot. Neal would make fun of me because I’d turn up at the smallest thing. Anybody with like a frown on their face, I’m like, ‘Aw! Turn us heel, please!’ Because that’s where I felt like our bread and butter was going to be. But anyway, people booing us out of buildings and being upset about it, it was rough for so many different reasons, but I think the thing that really solidified it for me in the sense of, ‘Oh this is something that we can actually use,’ is when we were overseas wrestling against Cesaro and Kidd. It was the most incredible thing.
What? Were we in Germany? So, it was like you guys in the ring against Kidd and Cesaro. Nattie was on the outside. I was one the outside for us. And I remember it was so loud against us and for them. And Cesaro looked at me went, ‘Switch?’ And then just switched the whole match on the fly.
H/T 411Mania for the transcriptions
