Xavier Woods had rough starts -- both in the WWE and with New Day. However, the two-time tag team champion says the perceived initial failure of the New Day wasn't so.
When first put together, The New Day didn't garner the reaction desired. According to Woods, he was just happy the fans were making noise.
"[The gimmick] didn’t fail because the point of what we’re doing is trying to get a response from people, whether they are booing you or whether they are cheering for you, as long as they are making noise and they have some sort of emotional attachment, then you have succeeded. Now with us, when we came out, people were booing because they did not like us. We didn’t change anything. We kept doing everything the same as when we debuted. And after a few months, people started cheering for us because, then, they understood what we were and they understood who we were and they realized that they enjoy it. So I wouldn’t say that we failed at all because the crowd definitely felt a certain kind of way about us, which is exactly what we’re trying to do every time we go out there," said Woods to Raute Musik.
New Day would go on to be one of the most successful tag teams in WWE history, a far cry from the trajectory they seemed poised for within their first few months. Vince McMahon was said to be instrumental in this.
“[McMahon] was one of the very few people who actually believed in us, that we’d be able to make all this stuff work. And so, having him support us is definitely huge. He helped us out a lot. But yeah, no, he’s definitely happy that his help and his input and his ideas were able to be put to use in this type of way to where it has been as successful as it has been.” said Woods.
Woods will participate in the 2017 Royal Rumble. Fightful.com will have full, live coverage, a stat tracker, and reporters on the scene for the event.
