There was a time when New Day was the top tag team in all of WWE. They got the choice spots atop the card, received incredible entrances decked out in power rangers and/or Dragon Ball Z gear, and even transcended their popularity outside of the ring, with Booty-Os being sold at FYEs and their interactive special, “Escape The Undertaker,” available to all on Netflix.
However, since The Usos started hoarding championships alongside Roman Reigns like a collection of dragons atop the WWE card, New Day has found themselves in an unusual spot, a situation made no better by Big E's potentially career-ending neck injury at the hands of Ridge Holland in 2022. Still, with a surprise arrival in NXT, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods have seemingly found new life where they can reign supreme once more and be featured parts of weekly television once more. Winning the straps from Pretty Deadly at NXT Deadl1ne, New Day have been up to their typical shenanigans, but just because they're having fun doesn't mean they aren't helping out young performers along the way. No, Kingston has taken a particular interest in helping out the team he beat, Pretty Deadly, who he thinks could be a fun surprise to WWE fans when they eventually land on the main roster, as he detailed in an interview with Under The Ring.
“To be able to go there every week and just watch and observe and give little nuggets of advice, especially with Pretty Deadly,” Kingston said via Fightful. “I feel like they’re so incredibly special with the way they’re able to connect with the crowd, even if it’s a way that the crowd is repulsed by them [laughs]. You know? It’s not an easy thing to do. It’s very difficult to go out there and get people emotionally invested in what you do, and they got it man. They got it. Hopefully, when the time is right, they come up to the main roster, and the WWE universe is going to be pleasantly surprised…the people that are not familiar with their work are going to be very impressed, for sure.”
Will Pretty Deadly actually get over on RAW or SmackDown? Or will their shtick go over like the OG Maximum Male Models before they got weird, funny, and subversive? Only time will tell, but having a team like New Day in their corner certainly can't hurt.
Kofi Kingston is preparing for life after WWE.
Working the media circuit ahead of NXT Vengence Day, Kingston sat down to talk with Peter Rosenberg on Cheap Heat to discuss just how much wrestling he has left in the proverbial tank.
“I don't know. I have a couple of years left on my contract,” Kingston said via Fightful. “I never say, ‘In two years I'm going to be done.' We always get on Mark Henry about this because he said he was going to retire for 12 years. ‘I'm gonna be done after this year,' and all of a sudden he comes out in his stuff, ‘Vince (McMahon) told me that they needed me, so I signed for another five years.' Mark, come on man, you ain't never retiring! We get on him about that. This industry is so unique and so fun and such a short period of time in our lives, and I know it's very hard to walk away. What a lot of people miss about it, and from being on the roster and what I've been told, they miss the camaraderie in the locker room. Even now, I see the transition happening where myself, Dolph (Ziggler), Miz, Randy (Orton), we're kind of the elder statesmen.”
“Everyone else has gone through NXT, people who I didn't come up with, so you see the natural transition happening, but the camaraderie in the locker room, it's still there. Once that's gone, you don't really get it back. I've always said, as long as I'm having fun, I don't want to be the guy who comes to work every day and is complaining about being there, ‘I'm not happy with a storyline, I'm pissed off about this.' This job is so amazing that you should be feeling elated about it every single day. Obviously, there are ups and downs, we all know that, but overall, you shouldn't be coming to work and having it weigh on yourself and you take it home and you're mad about what's going on at work and now the quality of your life isn't what it should be.”
Asked if the other members of New Day have had discussions with him about retirement, Kingston assured Rosenberg that he will be working with Big E and Woods for a very long time even when the trio have stopped wrestling professionally.
“I told them this, and they're starting to come around, once you get past 30, it's all the same age bracket,” Kingson said. “Are they younger than me or are we all the same age? They might even be older than me. Woods has been working has been working in the industry for a very long time. He's got like 27 years in the business. He's the real veteran of the group. Am I older than him or not? Who is to say? When it's all said and done, we definitely want to continue to work with each other on an entertainment platform, whatever that looks like, we're figuring that out. We take it one day at a time. We'll see what happened when the contract expires and we'll cross that bridge when it comes.”
Would you like to see a New Day podcast, web show, or even a traveling variety show when their in-ring careers come to an end? If you answered yes, you might just be in luck.
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