Xavier Woods called dibs on the crown
At the appropriately named event of WWE Crown Jewel, Xavier Woods captured a lifelong dream when he won the King of the Ring tournament and officially became “King Woods.” In the Years leading up to this, Xavier Woods was never shy about proclaiming that he would one day be King of the Ring regardless of whether or not WWE was actually running the tournament at the time.
Now, he is explaining how constantly beating the drum of wanting to participate in the tournament built a rapport with the audience that allowed them to associate him with the tournament, effectively believing he was able to call dibs on the crown by using the power of social media.
Speaking on the Out of Character podcast with Ryan Satin, Woods explained that he really believes the crown and the right to be King of the Ring is legitimately his.
"This is probably going to sound really weird. In my head, it legitimately belongs to me. I know that sounds weird and doesn't make any sense. To me, it's like the idea of kids calling 'dibs.' That's how I feel. When I say speaking your truth into reality and existence, it's not necessarily, 'just say things are going to happen and they'll happen.' You have to work towards them and luck is the intersection of skill and opportunity. You have to be ready and make the opportunity for yourself. For me, I felt like I was keeping my blade as sharp as possible and I thought I was going to land in the tournament in 2019 because I had already been jazzing it up and I wasn't in and I was like, 'These mother... I am the only one talking about this.' There's that idea of people in the tournament, there's an opportunity for them to win something they didn't have before. For me, it's winning something I always wanted, so it's different. Every since yelling about it, especially when I didn't make the tournament in 2019, I ramped it up a good bit. I was a little angry, I'll be honest, I was a little upset. Legitimately hurt. I was like, 'let me tell people about my hurt and maybe they'll understand why I like this so much.' In doing that, it started to bleed more and more into all of my socials."
He continued, "The WrestleMania announcement video, when they announced all those dates, I took that video, shot myself on a green screen as a reporter, reporting that they were bringing back King of the Ring. 'Oh, we're doing WrestleMania dates, there is no King of the Ring? What the hell are we doing?' Then I shut it off. That sort of fun, dumb stuff, goes along well. It's tongue and cheek and we're laughing about it, but it makes you really go, 'I wish they had King of the Ring.' When people start to say that, every time they see you because they know how much you like it, your passion bleeds into them and it becomes their passion too. That's what I think wrestling really is. This generation has access to social media and it's strong and powerful. Why would you not take the ability to create that feeling in people and port it over to social media because now we're interacting on days where there is no show."
Since winning the tournament, Xavier Woods has received the biggest push of his singles career. Most recently, he took Roman Reigns to the limit on Friday Night SmackDown but it was Roman Reigns that would end the night wearing the crown of King of the Ring. Learn more here.
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