WWE News: Big Superstar Nearly Squashed The New Day Gimmick Before It Debuted

You were in the minority if you envisioned The New Day becoming what it is today after it’s WWE inception back in late 2014. In fact, The New Day wasn’t even supposed to be The New Day when WWE officials originally decided to align Kofi Kingston, Big E, and Xavier Woods together as a faction. Regardless of how they started or what they became, Kofi, Big E, and Xavier clearly needed each other because everything else wasn’t working.

It took Woods nine months of aimless booking to find his New Day brethren. Kofi was a model employee, but one who’d been stuck in the mid-card for the majority of his six-plus year tenure with WWE at that point, never able to crack the main event scene. His one major program came with Randy Orton, though nothing of significance ever came as a result. Big E made a big impact upon his debut, but he found himself floundering as well after separating from Dolph Ziggler and AJ Lee. They needed The New Day as much as the WWE Universe did, despite not realizing it right away.

As noted, the threesome’s initial union began with Xavier Woods admonishing Big E and Kofi for suffering another loss as a relatively inconsequential tag team. Xavier’s gimmick was a blend of black militant and professor, though that was quickly dropped when talk of racism in the WWE surfaced again. Four months later, the WWE Universe got their first taste of what became The New Day.

The group’s reemergence as positivity-espousing baptists was supposed to be portrayed as babyfaces that fans would support. That backfired very quickly. Instead of chanting “New Day rocks!” as intended, fans shouted “New Day sucks!” and they were forcibly turned heels. When Primo and Epico were reintroduced earlier this year as The Shining Stars, the duo was met with skepticism as well. The only difference is, The New Day were given time to work the kinks out, and the decision paid off in spades. The Shining Stars haven’t been afforded the same, having been yanked from competition on RAW and Smackdown and relegated to pre-recorded vignettes again.

Fortunately, the decision was made to keep The New Day on television even though the reaction it got wasn’t the one they expected. WWE put the machine behind the faction in advance of their debut, but there was one superstar who thought it was destined to fail. According to a report from Wrestling Inc, the Big Show told Kofi Kingston not to join the group because he thought it would kill his career.

“Later I had to go to Xavier [Woods], Kofi [Kingston] and Big E and said, ‘OK, what I said two weeks ago… completely disregard it.”

Like many of the fans, Big Show didn’t receive The New Day well in the beginning. But in just a few short weeks, he realized the error of his ways and let them know that what they had was magic. It didn’t matter if it didn’t get over as originally intended, they were still entertaining. Eventually, that brand of entertainment caused a change of heart from the fans as well, and WWE officials had to turn them babyface before WrestleMania 32.

Kofi’s career was at a crossroads regardless. He probably realized he was taking a gamble, but it was better than continually being stuck in the mud and having an extremely slim chance of climbing the ladder. His gamble paid off and The New Day is one of the most over weekly segments on WWE programming today. Their two stints as tag team champions have combined to be the longest reigns since the titles were introduced in 2002. Their next feud appears to be with the recently-returning Wyatt Family

[Image via WWE]