Big E Recalls Original Pitch For New Day, How It Became What It Was

Big E recently reflected back on the original notion for the group that would become the New Day, and how it morphed from the original plan to what it was. The stable began life on WWE TV as a gospel type gimmick, which was largely rejected by fans. Thanks to E, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods, as well as some creative tweaks, the group eventually become one of the company’s most popular and celebrated groups.

Big E discussed the early, early days of the group back in FCW in his appearance on Insight With Chris Van Vliet. He noted that the original pitch was a new Nation of Domination character and charted how it turned into the group fans fell in love with. You can see the highlights below:

On The Group Not Initially Being Over:

“No, it sucks. It sucks, man. We were motivational preachers. “

On the Original Pitch For the Group:

“So the original pitch was for us to be the new Nation of Domination. So it was me. I don’t know if you remember Abraham Washington. So Abe Washington had a talk show on WWECW where Tony Atlas was his sidekick. All he would do was just laugh from time to time. But I’m telling you, people didn’t get to see the best of Abe. Abe is one of the best talkers I’ve ever been around. He would come into FCW, and he would cut these promos for Dusty. We would usually have these hard outs. You have a minute, maybe give you a minute and a half. Alex Riley and Abe Washington were the two guys who had an exception to just go. People didn’t get to see the best of Alex Riley as a promo, either. Dude was just incredible on the mic, but Abe was also just a masterful talker.

“So we were in FCW, it was me, Byron Saxton was still an active wrestler at the time. It was me, Saxton, Woods, and Abe. We all talked, but Abe was kind of positioned as the leader, and we had this group, and Abe was very much someone who unfortunately liked to push the envelope a little bit too much. I’m not going to talk about the reason he got fired, you could look that up. But he’s someone who always liked to kind of to put his foot over the line and see how far we could push things. We originally called the group the Clan, and it stood for Citizens Liberation of American Nationalism. It was supposed to be this militant black group, much in the vein of the Nation of Domination. We all grew up loving The Nation, and we wanted to do something in that vein. That group initially, it was initially the Clan, then we became The Plan, because the office said we’re not doing that. So we exchanged citizens for people, so that was it. We came out in white and red, so that very first suit that you see Woods come out in, that was like his old stuff from when we were pitching The Plan in FCW, so we never got to do that on FCW TV. We did a few weeks of that, and then eventually the office in FCW said it’s dead, you guys can’t do this anymore, move on.

On the Plan Morphing:

“But Woods, at the time, talks about having the worst debut of all time, because he comes up as R-Truth’s friend on the main roster, and almost right away, he’s kind of getting squashed. But he comes up to me, it was Extreme Rules of 2014 and he and Truth had a handicap match with Rusev. They both get killed, really, Woods gets killed within, I feel like a few seconds, and he was done for. Then Truth gets squashed right after. That same day I dropped the IC title to Bad News Barrett, who was red hot at the time. The death nail, I think, as a babyface is when you go out and when they don’t care at all. But to have fans when I’m blowing my comeback and they’re booing, they’re booing everything, they don’t want to see me. I was also a very boring character was kind of dead in the water. Barrett was a lot of fun.

“So that same day, Woods is dead in the water. I’m dead in the water. Kofi is a guy who has had five, six years into his main roster run, already a guy you know is going to be good, but kind of just seen as by the office as a good hand. So we kind of get to Kofi later, but Woods goes in and pitches the writers that day, pitches them this idea of doing a new Nation of Domination. They essentially laugh him out of the room, and he comes up to me after my match. I dropped the title, and he said, ‘Hey, what do you think about starting this group, kind of similar to what we did in FCW?’ I said, ‘I got nothing else, man.’ I always respected Woods as someone who was a very, very creative guy, just someone who was always pitching, always thinking outside the box. So I thought, man, you know what, he’s someone who I think has a ton of ideas. Let’s give it a shot. Honestly, that same day, I was told by creative, I was told by Road Dogg, ‘Look, we like you, but we got nothing for you. Essentially, we need you to go into pre-tapes and just try stuff.’ I went into pre-tapes that same day, after I don’t know if it was before or after talking to Woods, and we just tried stuff, and just tried a bunch of deliveries, and actually the last thing I ended up trying was, I grew up in the church, I grew up actually doing some preaching as a teenager myself in my dad’s church. So that oratory style was always very natural for me. I never wanted to do anything sacrilegious or blasphemous, so I always kind of avoided that, but I just thought there could be a way to do this in a way that’s not offensive to people who believe or Christians. I’m not trying to do anything that upsets people.

“So I just kind of went into pre-tapes and started doing the ‘next week, I’m about to grab the title…’ I feel like I can just riff and just do it. The great thing with that delivery is it’s always easy if you lose your place. It’s very easy to have a moment to repeat and give yourself a moment to come and kind of come up with something. So that style of promo and delivery was something very natural for me. So just knowing that the office really had nothing for me, that Woods was in need of something. I just said, ‘Let’s do this, man. Let’s give it a shot.’ Woods first came up with the idea of adding Kofi. I love Kofi. We interacted a little. He and I both trained at Cena’s gym, so I’d see him in Tampa from time to time. But my fear is they would never let him turn heel, and I thought for us to work as a group, we needed to be heels. So, from there, I don’t know if I fought it as much. I was just like, I don’t know, but eventually I get on board, and I say, okay, let’s talk to Kofi. Interestingly, Kofi, at the time, was kind of not really having the best time wrestling, and it was interesting, he even himself, he was thinking, “Maybe I want to retire early, maybe I want to be done. I kind of feel like I’ve kind of hit my glass ceiling. I think I’m good. But eventually we were kind of floored with how excited he was at the idea, and he was in, so we just kind of went from there, and we ended up spending months and months pitching that militant group. We actually got to be on TV. We were in South Florida when Woods comes out in that white and red suit and tells us we’re no longer going to be glad-handing and kissing babies and shaking hands, and we’re going to take what we want, and we did that for about a week.

“That idea was shelved, and then we had to go back to repitching, but eventually we got to be The New Day that people knew and loved. But it was months and months and months of pitching. The three of us were on house shows together. We didn’t have a name, but we got to work on chemistry, but we very quickly realized we have something here. We see the business the same, we want the same for each other. We never wanted one leader. We always liked the idea of all three of us being viewed in the same plane, and we just had so much fun together, so we knew it’s worth dying on this hill for, because we all were in desperate, we were all searching for something.”