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Big E Reveals What The Original Idea For The New Day Was

Zack Heydorn

WWE.com

It's very hard to imagine Xavier Woods, Kofi Kingston, and Big E as anything other than The New Day at this point, but the original idea for that group was a callback to a WWE Attitude Era faction.

In a written piece for The Players Tribune, Big E revealed that the initial idea for The New Day was for the trio to be a rebooted version of The Nation of Domination.

"Actually, Woods’s initial idea for The New Day was to reboot the Nation of Domination, the Attitude Era group that The Rock got his start in," Big E wrote. "The Nation was a faction of Black militants. And while it had a lot of cool moments (and those guys are all legends) … Woods, Kofi and I are not militants. But I think that just tells you what it’s been like at times to be a young Black wrestler trying to make it. You pitch based on what you feel will get you on TV. And what you feel will get you on TV is probably what’s gotten on TV before. And what’s gotten on TV before is a very narrow definition of Blackness."

MORE: Big E on Life After His Neck Injury: ‘I’m Grateful I Have More Healthy Days

Big E also opened up on the process of becoming New Day and said it was early pre-tapes that featured him using a preacher voice, which he grew up with, that led to early New Day characters.

"The day that Road Dogg sent me to pre-tapes, I played around with a bunch of different deliveries," Big E wrote in the piece. "And the one thing they liked was when I started using this voice that was kind of this Apostolic style of preaching — the style I grew up with. Then I guess the office heard it, and decided, you know, Let’s lean into the gospel!!! Because for some reason they were enamored by the southern Black church.

"That was a tough one. Black gospel is not who I am, and it’s definitely not who Kofi and Woods are. But we weren’t really in a position to push back on it. So even though we knew we were about to get booed out of every building……. we just did our best."

This week on WWE Raw, The New Day will celebrate their tenth anniversary together as a team. As a group, they've won multiple tag team championships. Big E and Kofi Kingston have both won the WWE Championship.

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Zack Heydorn
ZACK HEYDORN

Zack Heydorn has been covering the pro wrestling industry for nine years. He's a former Assistant Editor of PWTorch and Managing Editor of SEScoops. Zack is the author of the Hybrid Shoot book Stunning: The Wrestling Artistry of Steve Austin, which is available on Amazon. You can follow Zack on

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