WWE's The New Day On WrestleMania 34, The Usos, Never Wanting To Break Up

It’s been more than three years since WWE superstars Big E, Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston came together to form The New Day. All they’ve done since then is set a record as the longest-reigning WWE tag team champions, host WrestleMania and become one of the most popular acts in the entire industry.

On Sunday night, The New Day will perform at WrestleMania 34—for which Snickers is the exclusive presenting partner—in a match for the SmackDown Tag Team Championships against The Usos and The Bludgeon Brothers.

Before trying to become tag team champions for the fifth time, the charismatic trio spoke with International Business Times about WrestleMania, The Usos, their ridiculous catchphrases and much more.

This year you have a match at WrestleMania, but last year you were the hosts. Is there a different feel going into WrestleMania this year and are you happy to be back on the card?

Woods: I wouldn’t necessarily say it means more. It is definitely just a different feeling because now we know we’re going in to simply do battle. Before we were going in with a different responsibility of keeping the show on the rails. It’s definitely cool to be able to feel both of those because as far as hosting, we’re the only active roster talent that has had the opportunity to host WrestleMania. So it’s a really cool achievement that you don’t think of when you’re a kid. You’re not like, “Man I would love to host WrestleMania when I become an adult.” It’s cool to have that checked off on the list. Now we’re back in the fray for the tag team championships, so this Sunday at WrestleMania—which you can watch on the WWE Network— we’re gonna do what we do all year. We’re gonna do what we do best, and that’s perform in the ring.

Your feud with The Usos has been a long one, and it’s been one of the best feuds of the last year. Why do you have such a good chemistry with them?

Big E: I think it just stems from real life chemistry. I think those two guys, probably of the entire locker room, as far as guys that we’re close to, I’d put them at the very top. They’re two great human beings, but they also have such passion for this industry and for tag team wrestling. I feel like they approach our craft the same way that we do, and they know how to put together great matches. They know how to perform at the very peak, and I just think having that commonality as far as how a great match should go and how it’s supposed to be structured, those guys really understand that. I think right now they have a very rightful claim as being the best tag team on earth, and we’re about to snatch those titles from them.

You’re a team that could conceivably hold the tag team titles and still have someone fight for a singles title. Kofi, you’ve held singles titles a bunch throughout your career. Is that something you’ve pushed for or maybe thought about for the future?

Kingston: Absolutely, 100 percent. I think that’s one of the strengths of being in this group is that we all have goals of being the best team, but also kind of taking over. We definitely want to broach that singles tier, but all together, because like I tell everybody, three is better than one. Why wouldn’t you go into a situation and compete for a singles title when you have a squad? I want to have my squad with me. It’s something we’ve thought about and we’ve kind of done that in the past too. It was one Money in the Bank where I was in the ladder match, and Big E and Xavier were in the tag match, so yeah. Anything is possible. We have three people here and the possibilities are endless.

When teams are together for three years, people usually are waiting for them to break up. That was even the case with The Shield, and now with the Bullet Club. But I think with The New Day, it wouldn’t make sense for you to break up. How do you keep the group from getting stale?

Woods: I think it’s based on our friendship. We’re not portraying characters. We’re just going out and being friends and having a good time. And that’s the infectious part of the power of positivity. You see people having a good time out in public somewhere, it puts a smile on your face. You feel a little bit better about the world. The fact that we are the part of the show that’s always trying to bring the good out of people and trying to bring the fun out of people—I don’t think people get tired of having fun. That’s really what we’re here to do is to have a good time with each other, and push that energy through the camera into your home, so I don’t think that’s something that gets stale.

And to the breakup stuff: we have zero desire to ever (break up) because we’ve talked about this many times. This is the most fun any of us have had in our careers. There’s stuff that we thought was fun, and then we started doing this and we’re like, “Oh, that compared to this was boring!” I don’t want to do anything else besides be part of New Day for the rest of my career. When New Day’s done, I’m done.

I think the reason you can get some things over is because you’re having fun. You kind of made unicorns popular. You got a trombone over. I don’t think any other wrestlers could do that. Is there anything that stands out that you’re surprised became popular?

Woods: The trombone probably the most.

Big E: You’re surprised that did?

Woods: As fast as it did. Because it was such a random thing, and us asking for a trombone and them saying, “Yeah, sure.” And it was like, “What?” It wasn’t like a plan. Even with Booty O’s, we wanted that to become a thing and kind of expected it, as where with Francesa (the trombone) it just became and we kind of rode that wave.

Obviously, Vince McMahon isn’t telling you, “Go out there and say, “This is booty!”

Big E: That is not from the mind of Vince McMahon! (laughs). A lot of things—the trombone and booty—came from SummerSlam. So we were in New York, and we did a song parody. That was the first time we had the trombone. And I think we needed a lyric to describe...I said something like, “All these other tag teams are booty.” Because I always thought describing things as booty was funny, and it was something I did when I was younger, and I wanted to bring it back.

I think a lot of people think that we’re handed things and Vince says, “Say this.” But no, a lot of these things are organic. They come from conversations we have in the car or things that we see on Twitter that make us laugh, and we have been fortunate enough to get this long leash. We have a lot of creative control. There aren’t many things that we’ve gotten over that didn’t come from our brains.

Kingston: Even the “Who!” chant, I think we started randomly doing that. We were in the back thinking about what we were gonna say and we just kind of started doing it sporadically and then we go out there and we started doing it. Now you fast forward two years down the road and everybody at WrestleMania is chanting “Who!” at the highest pitch. These are like hundreds of thousands of people, you know what I mean? It’s crazy.

Woods: It all comes from things that are amusing to us. When we do something, if we’re not rapping when we’re saying or talking about it, we’re not gonna go out and do it. As long as it’s funny to us, that’s the stamp of approval. Did it make us laugh when we said it? OK, cool.

I watch every week and sometimes I forget why people are chanting something. I don’t even remember how it started.

Kingston: Why do they have pancakes? (laughs)

Big E: A lot of times I struggle to remember why things started or when, but they become staples of our act. Sometimes I think, if someone saw us right now, how do you explain unicorn horns? How do you explain these things that we have on our bodies? We’re pouring cereal into people’s mouths. How do you explain this to someone who’s never seen us before? Because even I, the people who are actually performing it, can’t explain how it started.

Kingston: You just had to be there!