11. The New Day
In 2014, Xavier Woods, Big E and Kofi Kingston were languishing in midcard mediocrity when they began to pitch an idea of the trio being a stable to creative. The pitch involved the three not being the Nation of Domination or any sort of angry characterization of African-Americans, but then again, there wasn't really any sort of exact clarification put on just who or what The New Day were actually supposed to be. Enter Vince McMahon... As the trio told Chris Jericho on the Talk is Jericho podcast, McMahon's idea was to re-cast the trio as a group of heavily religious African-American babyfaces, aka good guy versions of D-Von Dudley's "massively successful" run as "Reverend D-Von" in 2003. The gimmick didn't get over at all, and ultimately saw the fans begin to chant "New...Day Sucks," which led the trio (and not McMahon) to develop strategies to be an effective heel team. Given that they're now the tag team champions, they were right and McMahon was incredibly wrong.
Marcus K. Dowling
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Besides having been an independent professional wrestling manager for a decade, Marcus Dowling is a Washington, DC-based writer who has contributed to a plethora of online and print magazines and newspapers writing about music and popular culture over the past 15 years.
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