Big E Talks Kofi Kingston’s Latest Run, Ponders A Potential New Day Heel Turn & Break Up

SmackDown Live Superstar Big E was a recent guest on the Gorilla Position podcast where he opened up about Kofi Kingston’s latest run and also pondered a potential heel turn for The New Day. Highlights appear below.

(Transcription Credit: Michael McClead, WrestleZone)

On Kofi Kingston’s Latest Run:

It’s really cool for him to be thrust into this position, especially as a guy who was just a fill-in, and to see just how much it’s picked up online and with his peers is really cool, and it’s extremely well deserved for a guy that’s been around for 11 years, and has never been thrust into this kind of position.

Big E On Kofi Kingston’s SmackDown Live Gauntlet Match:

[Xavier] Woods and I, once we got kicked out from ringside, watched the rest of the match from The Gorilla Position….and we got genuinely emotional. Kofi isn’t a guy that ever complains. He doesn’t say, ‘Why wasn’t I given this chance or opportunity?’ He’s a guy that does everything he’s asked. He always does it quietly and humbly. He’s a guy that never gets in trouble. He will never be in the papers, in the press. He’s a guy that always does his job from week to week and for him to get an opportunity like that and really take it, and grab it, it was really heartwarming to see the response from fans, from other talent. He’s a beloved guy. He’s one of the best humans you will ever meet in this industry, or otherwise. It was just a genuinely heartwarming moment to see him go out there and kill it. Especially when you go from tag matches – we’re in a lot of tag matches – 10 minute tag matches, 15, sometimes we’ll have a 20 minute tag match – when you go from that to wrestling an hour of a singles match where you get a new guy every 20 minutes or so is incredible and he held his own. It was one of those genuine moments that I’ll always remember.

On New Day Turning Heel:

I don’t know. You’re smart enough to know how things work around here. I love being a part of the dark side, but we’re in a good role now, too. We engage kids and are able to do these appearances, too. If you look at the scope of what we do in WWE, there’s a good portion of it that’s in the ring, but there’s so much more of it outside the ring, especially with what we’re doing with the appearances with the gaming channel (UpUpDownDown), with the amount of the stuff we do outside of the confines of the 20×20. We do a lot for this company and it’s a business ultimately. As engaging as it would be from an entertainment standpoint for us to be heels and do something more dastardly on a weekly basis, we also provide a lot of value in our current role. Of course, we’d be excited to be heels. Of course, we’d want to do something in that vein and shake things up a bit, but if this is the role we’re given – that’s always been our mentality – we’re going to knock it out of the park to the best of our ability. We’re open to it. We’re definitely game to it. We’re game to a lot of things. We wanted to be a faction originally. We saw ourselves doing singles stuff. Kofi would have a singles program and Woods would have a singles program and we would get back together. We feel like we could bring a lot to this company that we have yet to really do, so of course we’re open to it.

Big E Talks New Day’s Chemistry:

We were just very persistent, honestly. For me and Woods, it felt like a last-ditch effort to save our careers, so we felt like we were going to go all in on this. It’s sink or swim time. For us one of the things we realized very quickly is that we have a very great chemistry. Even early on we were doing house shows together well before we were on TV together, so we got to build that chemistry, not just in the ring, but now we’re traveling with each other and we’re texting when we’re at home and figuring out ideas, and realized that we really click, and we all had a similar vision with how we saw WWE, and our position in the company, and what we wanted to accomplish in the company. That’s what carried us through. We really operated as a collective. At no point was there one members saying, ‘Hey, I feel like I should be the star,’ or some guy pitching behind our backs to break us up. We were always on the same page. We operated as a single unit, so that helped us a ton and it wasn’t easy. Obviously, the first several months were very difficult getting past the rocky moments, but I think eventually we were able to convince the powers that be that we needed to be more of ourselves, and to release some of the shackles, and let us swim on our own merits. We were able to do that and that’s a testament to our selflessness, which is important. That’s us giving to the group more than ourselves as individuals and as sappy and cliche as that can be, it really worked for us.

On A Potential New Day Split & What May Be Next For The Trio :

That’s something that we talk about often that we have no desire to do whatsoever, but for people that want something fresh and different, I feel like there’s a lot we haven’t done. We initially wanted to be this Nation of Domination-esque group, very serious and aggressive. That’s a run we never had. We’ve been silly, to some degree, for the last 4 years. That’s something we feel we can do, if that is an option. We never really operated as a true faction. We’ve been a tag team where Kofi got to do Money In The Bank a few years ago while Woods and I did the tag stuff for a little bit, but there’s stuff we can do there.

Readers may listen to Gorilla Position’s interview with Big E via ITunes.

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