WWE’s Kofi Kingston joined Corey Graves’ “After The Bell” podcast this week to talk about The New Day winning the NXT Tag Team Championship, his Royal Rumble resume and several other topics.
Kofi on how the New Day going to NXT came to be:
“We were presented with that opportunity to go over to NXT and we’re like, ‘Yeah, of course, we’d love to do that’, and especially working with Pretty Deadly is something that we had been wanting to do for a very long time. From a character perspective watching them in NXT, like, these guys are ridiculous in the best way possible. Just the way that they look, you want to boo them and that was proven. We actually had a live event loop with them a couple of weeks ago. They just walked out and everyone just automatically booed them. I’m like, you don’t even know who these guys are. They have such a special talent.”
“Our job is to kind of pass down the knowledge that we’ve learned through experience and through the people that have given it to us, otherwise the business doesn’t continue. That’s the way that the business has been able to thrive is by people passing down what they’ve learned and getting in there with guys who have less experience. It’s cool to be on that side of the coin because it happened really, really quickly. A lot of things that we assume are common knowledge, the people in NXT don’t know, because right now, the experience level is so uniform. It’s really even. You have certain people who have a little bit more experience than others, but there’s no one there that’s been there for like, you know, that has like 10 or 12 years of experience. Everybody’s kind of right around the same. So for us to be able to bring our experience there and talk about what we’ve learned, and people are like, their minds are blown. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God. We do know a little bit, I guess.’ So yeah, it’s cool, man.”
Kofi Kingston said he credits John Morrison with inventing cool ways to not get eliminated from The Royal Rumble:
“I always got to give credit to John Morrison because he was one who did it first when he got knocked off the apron and Spider Man’d down to the barricade and jumped in. Then everyone’s like, ‘Well, that was crazy. That was awesome.’ The next year, he wasn’t with the company anymore. So I was like, ‘Oh, let me go ahead.’ Every year, it’s been just an honor to do something that the people look forward to because I think that at the crux of our industry and being successful in our industry, you really are just trying to find a way to stand out.”
Click below for the full interview.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit After The Bell with Corey Graves with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.