Xavier Woods Talks About Original Plans for The New Day, His PhD and the WWE World Title, More

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I spoke with Xavier Woods during the latest episode of the PodNasty Wrestling Podcast. We spoke about the recent Behind the Curtain Documentary in addition to a host of subjects such as the scrapping of the militant black gimmick, original plans for the New Day and why Woods would rather be a PhD than a WWE World Heavyweight champion.

It’s a very informative interview with great insight to the growth of Woods as a performer. Please see quotes below in addition to this link to the episode on YouTube. The interview begins around the 12:40 mark.

Why the militant stable was dropped:

“Wrestling is a never-ending storybook so sometimes you start going one direction, but the beauty of it is we could go in whatever direct we want but things just changed. For what reason, I’m not exactly sure, but it’s WWE and you kind of just go with the flow,” said Woods.

“It ’s one of the things you learn when you get hired is it is an ever-changing and ever-evolving living breathing workism, so the best way to stay afloat is to just go along with the things that are occurring around you.”

“I’m not sure why things changed, but in light of recent developments of New Day it’s great that they did because to me rather than someone just coming out and the character just being there, it’s nice to be able to see that character evolve over time.”

Why he thought The New Day would succeed as babyfaces:

“We had a couple of different schools of thoughts. We thought this would occur, that people would be into it, because it’s maybe one of the only positive things on television, because you turn on the news and there’s death, murder, car crashes and everything,” said Woods.

“Here’s a positive thing with three guys, all college educated, all college athletes, all very eloquent so we’ll preach a positive message like ‘do well in life and go to school, make sure you work out you could be big and strong like E, make sure if you stretch a lot you can be flexible and agile like Kofi and make sure if you read your books you could be smart like Woods.’”

“And then we realized after a few months it turned into ‘people don’t like those who are happy.’

“So it’s kind of like a play on society, essentially, people of American society. Back in the 80s, if someone’s happy, someone’s doing well, someone’s getting hardships, you cheered for that person,” said Woods.

“But now it’s 2015, and they don’t like that. They want someone who’s grimy and who doesn’t like people and who doesn’t smile and isn’t happy and wants to punt a puppy across a football field. If that happened, people would be watching and it would get 3 million views on YouTube because it’s something that’s horrible so essentially society has created this thing where people like to see car wrecks, and they want to see a hot mess and they want to see a fall from grace. So if you don’t have those things people are going to boo you because that’s not entertaining to them, they want to see a mess, they want to see somebody fall on the sidewalk and bust their lip on the ground. They don’t like nice things.”

Why he’d choose a PhD over a WWE World Heavyweight Title:

“I feel like we have the opportunity as WWE Superstars to make some sort of impact on lives whether it’s one kid or whether it’s an adult,” said Woods.”

“Yes, guys have been WWE World Heavyweight champion, and it’s amazing, I take nothing from that at all. But if there’s a kid who’s out there in the world watching wrestling and they see me and they know I have my PhD while I was wrestling, that could possibly inspire them to not drop out of school, to not drop out of college, to go and obtain that type of educational status, and that to me means a lot more.”

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