The New Day has come a long way since they debuted as a group in 2014. As you may remember, they were originally babyfaces who were meant to be like stereotypical black preachers, and basically nobody was into that. Now they’re wildly popular and have their own cereal. The shift happened in 2015, when they turned heel, enabling them to develop an edge that they retain to this day, despite not being heels anymore. Comicbook.com, of all places, pointed us to a great interview with Xavier Woods on the Corridor Cast podcast, in which he explains that he literally told Vince McMahon to go ahead and fire him if he couldn’t get the New Day over as heels. It’s a pretty great story:
When they let us make the group, we were good guys. For the industry terms, we were baby faces, and we thought we should be bad guys, heels, and after a while, some things happened and people were chanting, “New Day sucks” and it’s like, “Ok, yes. Cool. They’ll let us turn a corner and we can be bad guys now,” and they thought that since Kofi had been a baby-face for so long that they wouldn’t boo him, and so I was like, “No, we’re in control of that. I guarantee you…” I went to Vince McMahon and I was like, “If you give us… if you give me a microphone four weeks in a row, I guarantee you that they’ll boo Kofi Kingston,” and he was like, “You really believe in this that much?” I said, “Yes, I believe that I can do it,” and he goes, “Four weeks? And if you don’t do it in four weeks then what happens?” I said if “I don’t do it in four weeks, you’ve got 60 dudes in developmental that deserve this spot more than I do,” [and Vince is like], “I can send you home? Get ready,” and I said, “You should if I can’t do it. If I can’t make good on this then I don’t deserve to be here,” and he’s like, “Alright.”
And as you know, especially if you were watching in 2015, it totally worked. The New Day got over as heels, and before long that enabled them to become much more popular babyfaces. Xavier’s story is a great example of that whole “grab the brass ring” thing that we hear so much about. You can watch the whole interview below, and thanks to ComicBook.com for the transcript.
