The New Day, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods, were amped to see fans back in the building.
The New Day is one act in modern-day WWE that heavily relies on fan interaction for their characters' presentations. For the last year due to the global coronavirus pandemic, WWE has not had a live audience in attendance. That all changed at WrestleMania 37 when fans returned for the two nights of the biggest event of the year.
Speaking on a special bonus episode of WWE After The Bell, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods opened up about how much energy the fans’ presence gave them and what it was like to be working once again with Big E, the third member of the group that is now separated due to the brand split.
"I knew it was going to be intense, Kingston began. “So number one, anytime that me, Woods, and E get together, our levels are just amped up. On a day like WrestleMania, we're together all day long and even though we were together [Friday] taping our podcast, the energy is still there.
"So you walk through the curtain and there's another curtain around the corner, and when we walk through like that initial curtain and we were in that tunnel that's when this uncontrollable energy -- knowing that finally, after over a year, we were going to see fans and I just wanted to get out there and as soon as we got out and you see actual people in the crowd… Earlier in the day, they had the cardboard cutouts, and then when we got out there, there were people in front of the cutouts. So there were even more people than we thought there were going to be and just the energy was just amazing. We've been starving for this. Literally been starving for this, for over a year, man. That's a long time. The day was finally here, so it was just uncontrollable energy.”
Xavier Woods echoed the sentiment of his partner while also saying that initially, he wasn't as excited for WrestleMania until he got into the gorilla position.
“For me, I'm not the kind of person who gets super excited. So even all week, it was like, ‘Oh, are you excited for a WrestleMania?’ No, because there's two nights and then we're going to wrestle again on Monday and it's 52 weeks a year so it's just kind of, we're going to do what we do. But, I never get amped up until right before I go out. So it's hard for me to be excited for anything until right before it happens.”
Woods continued, “We've been having a good time. Like Kofi said, me, Kofi, and E were all together, so we're just vibing, we're vibing with the guys from Smackdown who we don't get to see and then as soon as we walked to gorilla, my stomach completely flipped upside down and I looked at the guys and said, ‘There we go. It's time. Time to go.’ Because when you're not nervous at all, even when you've been wrestling for 17 years and you think your level of nervousness starts later and later, but it's still just like the first time you go and do it. So, I was just really excited that I got to do that with my friends because since we've been separated with E on SmackDown, we get to go do our entrance every week and it's fun, it's cool, we have a good time. But having that third component, having that Big E component completely changes our mindset before we go out to the ring. [Their warm-up routine is] Big E losing his mind. That turns us up to where we need to be and so, to have that before we went out tonight with the first time we’ve had people in over a year, it was just a lot of energy. Like you said, before the show even started, we were losing it. We weren't expecting it. It was almost like you forgot what that adrenaline rush is like. There is nothing at all on this Earth that feels like that. This is 25,000 people. Back in the day, there was one WrestleMania where we had like 110,000 people. I can't imagine what the guys and girls who this is the biggest crowd they’ve wrestled in front of, because they’ve come up during the quarantine season, essentially, once we get back to full crowds and full audiences and full WrestleMania, I'm so excited to see their excitement at the next stage because they're all so excited now.”
The Wrestlemania that Xavier Woods is referring to is Wrestlemania 32 which took place at AT&T Stadium in Dallas, Texas. That same stadium will be the very sight of WrestleMania next year as WrestleMania 38 takes place in Dallas, Texas in April of 2022. While there were ads for the event run during WrestleMania 37, there was no specific date set for WrestleMania 38 in the ads, there was only the clear mention of April 2022.
After Dallas, WrestleMania will be in Los Angeles California, at SoFi Stadium, in 2023. Originally, SoFi stadium was supposed to host the event of this year before the breakout of the global pandemic.
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