Kofi Kingston Opens Up About The New Day’s Creative Journey

Kofi Kingston recently appeared on Edge and Christian’s podcast and here are some highlights courtesy of Reddit user FuzzyWuzzyMooMoo:

Kofi Kingston on Vince McMahon’s reaction to the crowd rejecting the New Day’s initial positivity gimmick: “He really thought that the positivity gimmick was going to be over with the crowd. He was very shocked that it didn’t go over with the crowd.”

Kofi says the original idea of the New Day was for three guys who were disgruntled with their position in the company, but after two weeks the idea was squashed. He says that they were in and out of Vince’s office every week pitching ideas to him for 4 to 6 months.

Vince would tweak whatever they gave him and they told him that whatever it is that Vince gave the New Day they would make it work.

Vince finally gave them the gimmick of being preachers and preaching positivity. Kofi says they were nodding yes, but in they’re head saying no.

After fans rejected them as faces, he says they embraced that. And they finally talked to Vince about letting them be heels.

In the end he says he was happy that he got to play a bad guy for the first time in that way.

Kofi says he spent a month thinking of spots to do in the Elimination Chamber back in 2009 and was told the same day of the PPV that Edge would be taking his spot. (Edge later states that he felt bad when that happened)

He says that Mustafa Ali would have killed it in this position, so he has to kill it and he can’t allow it to be a let down and he has to seize the moment.

Triple H came up with the idea of New Day coming out of the cereal box at WrestleMania 32.

Kofi says that the New Day has earned the trust of Vince and the writing team. He says they have “a very long leash.”

New Day are given promos, but they retool and revamp the whole thing. Then when they show it to Vince he says “Ugh, I don’t get this.” But since they have that long leash Vince has faith that they will be entertaining.

Kofi says that a lot of his inspiration for moves he does comes from Kung-fu movies, Cartoons and Anime. If he sees something cool he wants to try and recreate it in real life.