Kofi Kingston talks The New Days's upcoming 10th anniversary

[Chris]

Kofi Kingston opens up about 10 years of The New Day in WWE, Xavier Woods ‘tension’

With The New Day set to be honored on WWE Raw for their 10 years as a group, Kofi Kingston opens up to The Post about the faction’s longevity.

nypost.com

The New Day will get its flowers after 10 years as one of the most successful and entertaining factions in WWE history. The company plans to celebrate the faction of Kofi Kingston, Xavier Woods and Big E in the coming weeks during “Monday Night Raw” on USA Network. Before the big day, The Post’s Joseph Staszewski caught up with Kingston for some Q&A:

(Edited for clarity and length)

Q: Some things in wrestling don’t last 10 weeks or 10 months. To get to 10 years with New Day, what does that longevity mean to you guys?

A: When you think about all the tag teams that have come through WWE, a lot of them, we think they have lasted a lot longer than they actually have. And for us to go 10 years is really an incredible feat and something that we really take a lot of pride in, something that we strived for. This is always the goal to get to this point and beyond.

So yeah, man, we take a lot of pride, and especially with the fact that we brought so much of the industry, we’ve been able to do so many incredible things, hosting WrestleMania, going toe to toe with The Rock on the mic, bringing actual cereal (Booty-Os) to WWE — the first food product in over a decade.

There’s just so many different things that we’ve been able to accomplish that we take a lot of pride in. Ten years is a really, really long time, and you don’t even quite realize it until you sit down and you’re like, “Oh my God, 10 years. Wow.”

Q: What do you think’s been the secret to the longevity?

A: Actually, like to be friends. You know, a lot of tag teams get thrown together where they’re like one person from this background and that background, and you guys look like you might be interested in the same thing, and now we’re gonna put you together, and you don’t have real chemistry. All of us, we really strive to push our brothers, to lift our brothers up. That’s what The New Day is all about. It’s all about brotherhood. And we really believe that to our core.

If Big E succeeds and I succeed, if Woods succeeds and that means I succeed, if I succeed, that means Woods and E succeed. I think that’s what’s been able to set us apart from a lot of different people, because I think different teams at a certain point they might have ulterior motives where they’re like, “Oh, I want to be a singles star, or I want to have this title and I want to do this.” And it’s I, I, me, me, me. We never have that mentality amongst us.

Q: When you guys started, you obviously weren’t sure if this was going to work as it started rough. To go from that to you having a WWE championship run, E having a WWE championship run, and Woods becoming King of the Ring to build single success, does that make it even more special that it led to that?

A: I think we didn’t know if the gimmick itself was going to work as it was, but we always knew that we were going to be successful. We always had the utmost confidence that by coming together and people experiencing our chemistry that they were either going to love us or they were going to hate us, but we were going to succeed no matter what. We’ve always had that mentality, but to see where people were booing us out of the building, literally telling us that we sucked after having like, six to eight months of trying our hardest to form something, to get onto TV.

As much as we described it over the years, of how hard and difficult it was to get in front of the camera and to have the red light on to be on TV, like it doesn’t even do it justice what the actual struggle was. To be fighting against the writers, trying to get in there, to be fighting against our own peers who are looking at us like, why are you guys always hanging out together? Why are you dressing up the same way? We’re trying to do something special. A lot of people didn’t understand what was going on. It was an uphill battle, but we knew, as long as we had each other that we were going to be successful.

Winning the WWE championship was my childhood dream. And if I don’t come across E and Woods, if we don’t cross paths and do what we do then that doesn’t happen. Big E becoming WWE champion, if we’re all not in sync, lockstep together, building ourselves and being entertaining, that doesn’t happen. Woods, becoming King of the Ring, that’s his lifelong dream. And to me, like that’s almost more impressive than becoming WWE champion, because the Kings of the Ring are like, that’s a really, really small club, and we don’t have that tournament every year. To be in the tournament is a big deal. To win, it is a huge deal.

We’re still out here pushing. We’re still trying to see how we can challenge ourselves, see what threshold we can cross, see what records we can bring.

Q: What’s it been like for you and Xavier to kind of explore what we’ve been seeing lately, where you’ve been together for a decade but the championship success has kind of not been there maybe for the last two years? What happens between these two friends when that happens?

A: There’s definitely, like clearly a little bit of tension, right? But I look at it like anybody who has siblings knows that you get into tiffs. You butt heads a little bit. But at the end of the day, like you realize what the big picture is, you know, you realize that you have the same goals, and that you want your partner to have the best treatment, and you want them to achieve all the successes that they can achieve.

You always come together at the family cookout, get-together, right? Because you’re family, right? Like, that’s really what it’s all about. But it’s been, it’s, you know, it’s been a little bit trying over the past couple years, trying to be successful and win championships, but at the same time, I think it’s a huge success that we have been able to even stay on TV and in a relevant way, you know, and still have an impact on people.

We come out, the people are still chanting “New Day rocks.” We come out, the people are still smiling. They’re still on their feet. They’re still ready to have a good time. They know that they’re going to be entertained in a way that nobody else on the roster is going to be able to be able to entertain them. So that, in and of itself, is still success.

Q: It’s been a couple years since Big E wrestled. There’s obviously been hope for him to come back [from his broken neck], but it doesn’t seem that way. What was it like just watching him go through the process of trying to get back even though it hasn’t worked out for him?

A: It’s been really motivating and inspiring to see him get to where he is and even from a mental perspective, when you break your neck, like your psyche can be so messed with, right, like you come within literally an inch of your life. That’s like a cliche phrase that gets thrown around, but he literally came within an inch of his life. His doctor had said that if his neck had broken one way, a degree, he would have had a stroke. If he would have broken it a degree, the other way, he would have been paralyzed a degree. The other way, he might have lost his life. So he literally came within an inch of his life.

And throughout the entire process, he has been positive about it. He has taken it one day at a time. He’s built his strength back. He’s out there. He says sometimes he forgets that he was even injured at all, so that, like, really is a testament to how far he’s come, and to see how he’s dealt with it, and to never see him be down about it, to always be positive about it, to always think about how he’s gonna get better each and every day.

Q: Does it feel like, whether it’s at this celebration or some point later on, he needs to be a part of this story with you and Xavier?

A: I don’t think that we can have a New Day celebration without Big E there. It wouldn’t feel right. It wouldn’t taste right, you know? So I’m hoping he’s available. But like I said, man, he’s busy doing a lot of things out there. I don’t know what his schedule is gonna look like, but hopefully he will be there. It would feel incomplete if he was not involved in The New Day 10-year anniversary in some way.

He had so much to do with the foundations of The New Day and what people think of when they think of The New Day. There’s still people to this day that when they see us, you know, like, Hey, New Day. They put their hand on their head. They put their hand on their hip as they twirl their hips, just like he did, you know? So, yeah, yeah, I would be willing to bet he’s going to be a part of it in some way, shape or form.

Q: Odyssey Jones was a part of this story for a moment. Was him being taken out of it (reportedly let go due to domestic violence allegations), was there anything that had to be a major change creatively?

One of the main lessons that I’ve learned is that you never know what tomorrow is going to bring with WWE. You always have to be ready to adjust at the drop of a hat. There have been times where we have known what’s going to happen at a “Monday Night Raw” for weeks and we work towards that, and then we get into the building, and then all of a sudden, we’re doing the exact opposite. And it’s your ability to adjust and roll with the punches that pulls you up. Nothing ever goes as planned.

So all that to say, you know, once Odyssey was out of the mix, we just had to figure out a way to pivot and keep the story going and keep on moving forward, because, as they say, the show must go on. And you figure out the best ways to adjust.