Xavier Woods Didn’t Know Kofi Kingston Was Winning WWE Championship at WrestleMania 35

Xavier Woods says he wasn’t told that Kofi Kingston was winning the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 35 by his own request. Woods was a guest on Chris Van Vliet’s podcast and discussed his reaction to Kingston’s win, his New Day trombone, and more. Chris sent along some highlights and the full video, which you can check out below:

Xavier Woods on how he got into playing trombone: “The trombone found me. So I wanted to play drums, but 6th grade me had no idea what the word percussion meant. When they called out percussion and we went into a room, I was like I don’t want to do that. Then they went on to the next instrument. Later I asked when are they doing drums? They told me that they called that 10 minutes ago and that door is closed now. So instead it was try to make some noises on these other instruments. Saxophone is sexy, maybe I can get good at that. They gave me a brass mouth piece and asked what I thought I should do with it. I made the sound instantly and then they asked can you do it with this smaller one? I could and then they tried the smallest one, which is the trumpet, which I couldn’t do. Then they said cool you are a trombone player.”

Xavier Woods on how the trombone was first introduced: “At that point we were trying to see what they would say yes to us doing. They had an idea after we won the titles in New York and they wanted us to sing a song. They wanted us to sing ‘New York, New York.’ We were in the car and I said do you think they will let us have a trombone, because I could figure it out on that. The guys were like let’s see. We texted them back and they told us yeah we can get a trombone. We played it during the show and I’m supposed to give it to someone so we can do our match. In my head I’m thinking I’m never going to be in this situation again. I get to take my passion of professional wrestling and my passion of trombone and experience this feeling again. So I’m going to keep the trombone and play it during the match. One of the camera guys is crying as he is trying to record. We go to commercial and the camera guy says ‘You got to keep playing that trombone. Vince is loving this.’ We got to the back and everyone is loving it. Vince told us ‘I never want to see you without a trombone when you go out there.’”

On not knowing Kofi Kingston would win the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 35: “I didn’t know it was going to happen. I said don’t tell me. If the outcome changes mid-match I don’t know what I am going to do. I said don’t tell me a thing. I knew what we had to do at the end, but I didn’t know anything after that. I assumed. But it was all so real, not that it wasn’t real before, but this was the thing that said it’s not just us having fun and having a good time. We’ve created something worth what we believe it is worth. Now everyone sees what it is worth. It’s for everyone who walks into work and they do everything in their power to possibly move ahead. But you just can’t. As your crushing it, you see people with little or no experience, they haven’t been through what you have, they are flying past you with no one saying a word to you. At that point in that moment, it made every decision I’ve made in my life correct. You never know if you are making the right choices. You have an idea but you never know.”