One could make the case for The New Day being the most-entertaining part of Monday Night Raw every single week for the past few months.
They've literally been injecting the 'Entertainment' in World Wrestling Entertainment perhaps better than anyone else on the roster, and everything they're doing — wrestling-wise and on the mic — is working, as evidenced by them headlining an episode of Raw with John Cena recently.
The trio — comprised of Big E, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods — will put their Tag Team championship on the line against The Dudley Boyz, one of the most celebrated teams in pro-wrestling history, at the WWE's Hell in a Cell pay per view this Sunday (Oct. 25 at 8 p.m. EDT).
Tech Times caught up with Kofi Kingston three days before the big match, as he talks about The New Day's feud with The Dudleys, how the trio creates their best material on the fly, pranks the crew plays on each other on the road and the funniest WWE Superstar backstage.
Oh, yeah...Kofi is a huge gamer, too, as he also touches on the upcoming release of WWE 2K16, his favorite wrestling video game of all time, and Xavier Woods' YouTube gaming channel UpUpDownDown. Watch out for Trouble in Paradise this weekend, Dudleys!
Hell in a Cell is upon us. What can fans expect from The New Day's match against The Dudley Boyz?
Kofi Kingston: Anybody who's been watching knows that there's a lot of bad blood between us and the Dudleys. We used to be the Dudleys' fans, watching them while growing up and it was awesome to see them come back to the WWE. Unfortunately, the Dudleys have a problem with The New Day just because we're tag-team champions.
It's just a shame because I'm very torn because I was a fan of the Attitude Era and tables and ladders and chairs and everything the Dudleys have done up until this point. Unfortunately now, they have victimized us. I don't know if you saw Raw this past Monday, but Xavier Woods was powerbombed through a table and he's in real rough shape. It's not cool what these Dudleys have been doing.
I know a lot of people have been enjoying them now, but we can't let them become tag-team champions because they are everything that's wrong with the WWE in terms of their regard of furniture, respecting the champions and their demeanor. They got a bad attitude and The New Day doesn't like that.
What made you a fan of The Dudley Boyz back in the day?
Well, back in the day, I used to love their ruthlessness and aggressiveness. As a kid growing up, watching that, it was everything you wanted to be. You didn't want to respect the rules, you didn't want to respect authority and the Dudleys definitely didn't have respect for authority.
Unfortunately, we have grown up and the Dudleys have not. We respect authority, rules and just a pleasant way of doing things. The New Day is all about positivity, for those who don't know. P - O - P — the Power of Positivity. It's what drives us, it's what we want to spread throughout the entire world. We just can't let them be champions because a champion is a very good role model and that's just what The New Day is.
You guys are so fluid on the mic, with plenty of personality and chemistry. How much of what The New Day says on Raw every week is on the fly?
A lot of it is on the fly. We've been riding together — myself, Xavier Woods and Big E — we've been traveling together for over a year. We're on the road five days a week. We spend more time with each other than we do with our own families, so a lot of times when we say things, we know what the other person is going to say before they even say it, so it ends up being just like seventh-grade chemistry class when you're just learning about hydrogen, oxygen and putting it all together to get H2O—water—and it flows smoothly. That's what The New Day does when we get together.
As colorful as each of your personalities are, there have got to be pranks that you've pulled on each other while on the road. Can you let us in on one of them?
There are a lot of funny stories ... we get along so much. There was one time actually where [laughs], we pulled up to a hotel and I forget what it was, but one of us lost a bet, so the consequence was Xavier had to do all of the booking of the rooms and checking in with an English accent. So, he comes in at like 4 in the morning with an English accent and the lady [at the hotel] isn't trying to hear it.
So, he's talking [in English accent], 'I need to check in, my name is Xavier' and the lady is calming him down and telling him to be quiet. The funny thing is she called E the wrong name, which we still call him to this day. When we go to Hotwire and fill something out, we put in Etmore. She kept calling him Etmore and that kind of stuck. We have a lot of stories like that where things just happen to us. It's good times all around at all hours of the night.
Who would you say is the funniest WWE Superstar backstage?
Cody Rhodes is hilarious. Anytime you see him back there, his interactions with people are hilarious — between him and Zack Ryder or him and Hornswoggle or him and Santino [Marella]. He's one of the funniest people that I ever met and he doesn't get enough credit for being funny and witty. Cody is real funny.
How often does Xavier play the trombone outside of WWE shows?
Well, he usually just plays it at work. A lot of people ask us at an airport or on the street — 'Hey, where's your trombone?' If you're a carpenter, you don't go to the grocery store with your tool belt and your saw and tools. This is something that he does in work or at home if he's serenading people or putting on a good performance for kids in the neighborhood. But most of the time, it's just at work.
You guys cut a hilarious promo for WWE 2K16 recently. Are you a big gamer?
I am a huge gamer. I haven't been able to game nearly as much since the birth of my son about two and a half years ago, but I still try to keep my ear to the ground. Xavier brings a traveling PS4 on the road with an LCD screen and everything, so that's where I get most of my gaming in — on the road and on my phone.
Have you had a chance to play WWE 2K16? It looks tremendous.
It looks phenomenal. Actually, we were just talking about this earlier. Xavier and Big E got to go to San Francisco last week and they got to play an exclusive version of the new 2K game and they said it's awesome. It looks so, so real and it looks a lot smoother than last year's game, if that's even possible. They had nothing but good things to say about the game and I'm anxious to play it and get my hands on it as well.
If not yourself, who will be the first character that you select to play with in the game?
I usually always pick myself. If not, then it's probably someone from the Attitude Era — either a Shawn Michaels or...actually I'm looking forward to being The Terminator. This is the first time in all the history of all these games that you have somebody that's not a wrestler. This is a character with his own movie and story and everybody knows who The Terminator is, so I think it's like so, so cool. Games like Mortal Kombat have integrated Freddy Krueger and The Predator and it's always cool to see that cross over, so now that we have The Terminator, I can't wait to pick him as well.
How prevalent are video games in the WWE locker room?
Really prevalent and Xavier Woods actually has a YouTube gaming channel called UpUpDownDown, in which all the gamers get on there. You see Heath Slater on there, the Usos, myself, Damien Sandow, E will be on there, [Brad] Maddox...a lot of us are avid gamers.
With that YouTube channel, people get to see us just chilling out and hanging out and being ourselves — not necessarily our characters on TV. It's very interesting just to see the different dynamics of people outside of the role that they're used to being seen on TV. It's a lot of interesting video-game play from a lot of WWE Superstars.
Nintendo turned 30 this week. What was your favorite Nintendo game and what was your favorite wrestling video game of all time?
Well, my favorite Nintendo game of all time is a real obscure one. I don't know if a lot of people will remember it, but it was called Flying Dragon. It was kind of a combination between a side-scrolling game and a fighting game, too. It was a fighting game before you had the Tekkens and Street Fighters and all that. This was kind of like the groundwork for that. It was a real good game with real good music and an endless storyline.
My favorite wrestling game of all time was...I used to like WCW/nWO Revenge. It was awesome. You were able to do everyone's finishing moves. It was such a simple game, but you could do everybody's moves, all the taunts, the rumbles...it was like a fantasy to see the game come to life in that way.
At the time, the graphics were so good. We actually played at Woods' house two months ago and went back and played those games and the graphics are not even close to what we remember them as. They're so grainy and what not, but at the time, they were cutting-edge and we all enjoyed playing them.
Do you have a favorite tech device that you're constantly using?
Yeah, it's got to be my iPhone 6 Plus. I was really apprehensive about going to a tablet just because I do a lot of our gear designs on my laptop, so I never wanted to get a tablet because it didn't have enough power to do Photoshop and everything, so I'd always walk around with my laptop.
But these days, I have so much access to things on my phone between games and movies and just different apps and with the [iPhone 6 Plus's] large screen, I almost don't need my laptop anymore. The only thing I use my laptop for is just Photoshop and designing gear. So, if they could find a way to do that on my phone, I will probably never use my laptop again. But right now, the iPhone 6 is my device of choice.
You have over a million followers on Twitter and you're constantly interacting with them. Is that your favorite social media avenue?
Yeah, definitely. I have a Facebook page, but I use it for just personal use at home and for childhood friends to keep in touch. Twitter, I think, is awesome because people can ask you questions and you could actually answer them. That's one of the coolest things about being a WWE fan these days is that you do have access to the people that you watch on TV because back in the day...I mean, I remember I was going through an airport and I saw Prince Albert, who wrestled as Tensai.
But I drove by him and I was just so blown away for just driving by him. So, now, these days, you actually get to talk to the people that you watch on TV. It's so much more interactive. I think that's really, really cool about this day of technology and just being a WWE fan in general.
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