WrestleMania turned into KofiMania in 2019 as Kofi Kingston captured the WWE Championship from Daniel Bryan.
Kingston's journey to the WWE Title was one of the best stories in wrestling over the past decade and the moment of him celebrating his WWE Title win alongside his best friends and New Day brothers Xavier Woods & Big E won't soon be forgotten.
But Vince McMahon may have thought that was the end of the journey for the group.
"I know there were rumours for a while that certain things were pitched, but I think because we had been so adamant about not wanting to be broken up I think that’s where people were like ‘ehhh, I don’t know if we should because they really don’t want it,'" Big E told Alex McCarthy of TalkSPORT. “I can’t really divulge the conversation, but even from the top of the business, the very head of what we do – you know exactly who I’m talking about – he directly told us ‘hey, this is the idea’ and we said, we’re not feeling it. This was post-KofiMania. There were people who wanted it earlier [than that] as well.”
New Day stayed together past KofiMania, but were eventually split in the 2020 WWE Draft with Woods & Kingston going to Raw and Big E landing on SmackDown. Since the split was forced by the draft and not by any actions from a member of the group, Big E believes there is plenty of life left in New Day.
"If we’d done it, we would have missed out on so many great moments. I still think that doing it now or soon, there are great moments to come and we have a lot more to offer," said Big E. "I think you’ve seen happy, clappy New Day for a very long time.I still even want to play around with the original ideas we had. When you saw Woods come out in that red and white suit in 2014… that was our original intent, our original plan! To be this hard-nosed, not shaking hands, not singing, not shucking and jiving anymore – we’re not taking it anymore. We’re not sitting back, we’re going to take it. Obviously, the group ended up being the exact opposite [laughs]. Instead of no more shaking hands and kissing babies, we now specialise in shaking hands and kissing babies and dancing [laughs]. We had to pivot a bit but it all worked out for us."
Big E continued by saying, “I think we still have so much to offer as a group and I just like telling stories in a different way. I get our business is a business of conflict, but I think the story of brotherhood and three guys who genuinely want the best for each other is different and unique. I think there’s a lot of things we could do; we haven’t even really teased any tension. We haven’t done a friendly rivalry. There’s things we could do to tow that line. The fact that we got to play video games with Kenny [Omega] and The Bucks… we didn’t do that behind people’s backs! Everyone approved it, that happened. To some that’s video games, but to me, that’s a moment. I feel on a large scale people were really behind it. So that was cool. I know there are a lot of things in the way, but I’d love to do more of that. Anytime you see that forbidden door be opened and you see people cross promotions, it’s just cool man. There’s so many matchups you’d never see that people would love to see."
The Young Bucks recently continued their rivalry with New Day on social media, sending out a mocking tweet after WWE named New Day the top WWE tag team of all-time.
Big E is set to compete in the WWE Money in the Bank ladder match at WWE Money in the Bank. You can find the current lineup for the show by clicking here.
