Big E rose to stardom as a member of the The New Day, so it’s fair to say that his time in the stable has been priceless to the reigning WWE Champion. But if you ask “The Powerhouse of Positivity,” his run as a tag team specialist, alongside Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston, preserved his body because it lightened his load of in-ring work.
During a recent appearance on My Mom’s Basement with Robbie Fox, Big E looked back on The New Day’s early years, when the group consistently stole the show with WWE’s best teams. He specifically recalled the trio’s feud with The Usos and described how being able to utilize multiple combinations of the stable kept them fresh, as The New Day could compete in different match-ups.
“So initially that first year or so, it was almost always me and Kofi with Woods on the floor, just because Vince was such a big fan of Woods playing the trombone and he was so great on the floor that he loved him in that role,” said Big E. “And it had nothing to do with the fact that he didn’t think he was good enough in the ring or anything like that. He just did a great job on the floor. But we eventually got to the point where we really felt like it was important for us just to get Woods going and to get him involved.
“And honestly it just allowed us to be a lot more multiple, and we were able to have the program with the Usos, I think one of the reasons we were able to go on for, I wanna say it was five months, our program with the Usos in 2017, I think, and I think the reason [was] because we were able to have, we have three different tag teams in one faction. And that helped us a lot.”
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Big E emphasized The New Day’s aim to elevate Woods after he initially was used in a managerial-like role. He noted that the group earned the producers’ trust to pick the tandem that would be wrestling any given night. In doing so, the WWE Champion stated that the stable protected themselves from a physical standpoint because they could collectively share the bumps and in-ring punishment between the three of them.
“So I think it was around mid-to-late 2015 when we made a more concerted effort to say, ‘Look, we wanna include Woods,’ and we even went as far as naming our separate pairings like little nicknames and whatnot,” said Big E. “But eventually we got to a point where there was a certain level of trust where we said, we would go to them and say, ‘The plan today is, it’s Woods and Big E wrestling.’ And then the producers just knew, okay that’s what it is.
“So thankfully we got that trust where people weren’t really fighting us on it. And we were able to pick our tandem, and I’m grateful for that. In many ways, I think it added some time to my career in that I was saving my body a bit. We were on the road a lot, but on these live event days, I’m working two of three shows, and they’re tag matches as well, so it helped us a lot from a standpoint of continuity to remain fresh and it also saved our bodies a bit.”
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