10 Wrestlers Too Good To Be Ruined By WWE's Bad Booking
9. The New Day
After five years of near-universal adoration, it's mind-blowing to think back on how utterly loathed the New Day were on their debut.
The New Day were originally conceived as a group of preachy, over the top "clap your hands if you believe" cheerleaders. Unfortunately, WWE wildly misread their audience and booked them as babyfaces, leading to fans revolting and showering the group with chants of "New Day Sucks!" the world over (just listen to the crowd's cheers in Japan as they get demolished by Brock Lesnar).
This wasn't part of a long-term plan to turn them heel - Vince McMahon was genuinely surprised at the audience's reaction to The New Day. Fortunately, the group convinced the WWE chairman to greenlight a heel turn and the trio managed to change the audience's perceptions of them through their own hard work. With Kofi Kingston and Big E putting on regular tag team clinics and Xavier Woods acting as their obnoxiously charismatic mouthpiece The New Day became so over that they had to become babyfaces again, except this time they were greeted with cheers instead of boos.
A rare example of hard work paying off in the WWE, The New Day deserve the respect of wrestling fans the world over for their groundbreaking, history-making run in the company.