Big E Looks Back At the Origin Of His Catchphrases

Like most good wrestlers, Big E is known for his catchphrases and he recently discussed the origins of “Don’t you dare be sour!” and “Big meaty men slapping meat.” The former of those phrases opened the New Day’s entrance for much of their run, while the “meaty men” line came from the New Day’s podcast and became a meme that he wanted to make merch out of.

Big E talked about where both catchphrases came from in his appearance on Insight With Chris Van Vliet. He noted that he did actually try to make “Meaty Men” merchandise, but that WWE’s legal department said no to it. You can see the highlights below:

On ‘Don’t You Dare Be Sour’ Becoming His Catchphrase:

“So Vince wanted us to have some kind of an intro. I never wanted to be the focal point of the groups, because I did not think that was fair to the other three. So we went into the studio, we got to work with Jim Johnson, the legend, to actually be in the studio with him in Stanford. So we went up to shoot our vignettes, and we also got to be in the studio with him to work on it, and it was just so great to hear his ideas, and to chop it up with him; it was awesome, such a great experience. So I went into the booth, and one thing they wanted is for me to lay down a bit of an intro. So ‘It’s a new day, yes it is.’ We did that. So I thought, okay, this is our little preamble, because I always think with wrestling themes, you always want that when you hear the glass break, you know it’s Austin in two seconds. I always want that within two seconds, I always want to know exactly who it is. So, I thought that was our thing. Okay, we have the ‘It’s a new day, yes it is.’ We’re good. But the office, they wanted something else on top of that. Okay, I guess I’ll try something. I want to say we were tinkering around with a few different things, I’d have to go back and listen to those first couple ones, because I know I didn’t have [my idea]. My thought was I’ll come up with something new for each town, and we did something like we were in Fort Lauderdale, and the only reason I remember this is because Austin Woods and Kofi would often mention it, but my first one was something like all ‘Fort La De Daddy, you feel it in your body.’

“I came up with a different rhyme, and I forgot how I closed it, but I was like, this isn’t tenable. I’m not going to be able to come up with something for every [town], especially then. If you’re on the Raw loops, you’re doing five shows a week, every single week in a different town. I’m not going to have the time and the acumen to come up with a new little four-bar rhyme for every single town. So I don’t remember exactly how we settled on it, but I kept tinkering around with it a little bit, and I’m sure I probably saw one of those hand dryers that says feel the power, because people send that from to me from time to time. I’m sure it was that being in my head, but I just wanted something with Oh [town]! We decided fairly early that feel the power was something that was going to be a good catchphrase. We just kind of worked backwards from there with the don’t you dare be sour, okay, that’ll work. So we tinkered with it a little bit, and then I just felt like, okay, that’s that’s the thing moving forward, and it’s been great, because now not only do I have a thing that works for the new day and in wrestling, but also I got to do the intros for Nascar. So it’s like, okay, I have this built-in thing, I got to do the last two walkouts for Showtime Sean Porter, in boxing he fought Errol Spence, which was a big deal. I got to do that walkout for the Bud Crawford fight as well. So now having this built-in thing that I can kind of tinker with, I’m on Cameo, and right now I’m doing a lot of stuff. So all my cameos right now, the proceeds are used to go to Feeding America.”

On His ‘Big Meaty Men Slapping Meat’ Line:

“I think it was my first time, and that silly clip I feel like is going to outlive me of all the things I’ve done in my career, but I’m grateful for it. So, and the really cool thing is a lot of times the clip gets shortened, so you don’t see who asks the question. That’s my guy, Rashad Dunn, former Iowa football player. We came in, we’re the same age, he’s like three, four days older than me. So we came in at the same time, we were roommates for two years. We still talk all the time. We have this core group of guys who lived in a house, actually the same house, so George Kittle has 830 Miller tattooed on his ass, because that’s that’s the house, CJ Bethard, who played with the 49ers as well, also went to Iowa, so those guys many years after us, they lived in the same house that we lived in, 830 Miller in Iowa City, that was our house as well. So Rashad, we flew him out to do the podcast, and we did this mailbag episode, and he asked me the question, so the guys are already getting primed for it. Because we do so much press together, we did so many interviews, they knew I was doing the Goldberg, and I would always, I would always ham it up a bit. I mean, I hammed everything up, definitely at the time, too.

“So they knew the Goldberg answer was coming, so that’s why you hear some of the little giggles and the tee hees coming already, but we would always have a lot of fun anytime people would ask us, our dream match, I knew every time Woods was going to say Too Cold Scorpio, he’s a huge Too Cold Scorpio fan, just his athleticism is kind of just ridiculous for a guy of his size. We always knew that Kofi was gonna answer Shawn Michaels, and they always knew my answer was Goldberg. So, yeah, the Goldberg answer just came out, and we all had a fit of the giggles, and sometimes you’re just feeling it, and it was just one of those moments where I started getting hot, just I felt the sweat come in. But just the energy of the room was a lot of fun, and yeah, and then a bunch of nonsense proceeded from that. But to see years later to hear meat chants at shows. I’m not saying this is the reason why, but you know, Booker now is doing the ‘No bread, no water, just meat.’ The fact that people understand you when you’re in a wrestling setting and you’re talking about meat, whether it’s the big meaty men or the big meaty ladies. I love that is the way you describe a hoss match. And to this day, on Twitter, on Instagram, I will still have people tag me. ‘Oh, I know Big E is smiling now.’ If there is an Oba-Brock match, or even like an indie match, where two big men, or two big women are going toe to toe. So it is a very, very silly, silly thing. I thought we were gonna be able to make merch. What I was told at the time that legal said no dice, so there’s no merch. But it’s a lot of fun, and I’m glad of all the things we’ve done, I’m glad that’s followed me.”