Big E Pitched To Cost Kofi Kingston At 2025 Royal Rumble, Admits Follow-Up To New Day Heel Turn Didn’t Go The Way They Wanted

On the December 2, 2024 episode of WWE Raw, New Day was officially disbanded when Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods chastised Big E for leaving them behind and then wanting to be their manager.

Big E had been unable to wrestle since March 2022 due to a neck injury wasn’t going to return to the ring.

While the turn by Big E turned Kingston & Woods into the top heels on the roster for a few weeks, there was no big follow-up or redemption.

“I think, unfortunately, you know, those guys were getting booed out of the building for the first several weeks. It’s the follow-up that, unfortunately, I don’t think went as well as we all would have liked. I even pitched an idea. I love the idea of me sitting for the Rumble. Imagine Kofi does a save where he ends up on the barricade. There’s some dude with his hat low because they were taking shots at my fiancée at the time too, so I love the idea, maybe our hats are real low at the time, Kofi lands on the barricade. We tilt our heads up, take our hats off, and then maybe there’s a swipe of the foot, and we cost him the Rumble, he goes out, something like that. But creative had other plans, I was told, ‘Hey, that’s something we can get to later, ‘and I’m not a save it guy. Oftentimes, people like, oh, let’s save that idea for later, but things with creative and direction move so much, we have a great idea, let’s capitalize on it now. But ultimately those were the two who were going to carry it. Creative had ideas. My role is now as a broadcaster for the PLEs, so ultimately I just thought let’s try to make this break-up the best we can, and the rest is in their hands. So unfortunately, the follow-up of that turn didn’t go the way we wanted, but we were proud of the initial heel turn,” Big E told Chris Van Vliet on Insight.

New Day would win the WWE World Tag Team Titles at WrestleMania 41, but the turn on Big E was a distant memory by then.

Elsewhere during the interview, Big E commented on Woods & Kingston leaving WWE. You can find his full comments here.