5 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (30 Dec - Results & Review)

2. ‘Boo! Yeet!’

WWE’s carefully curated attempts to get the New Day maximum heel heat continued Monday night with a bit of sweetener and a pretty cagey pairing.

Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods opened Raw with deafening boos, some originating from the crowd, some piped in through the speakers. However, it was clear that no one was cheering on the longtime fan favorites, and the jeers got louder as Kofi and Xavier kept trying to speak. (In another nice touch, Kingston yelled for the production truck to turn off the New Day’s old entrance music, signaling that the duo is heading for an image makeover.)

Then the brilliance kicked in. If you’re going to try to train the audience to boo the New Day mercilessly, why not bring out the guy who gets the biggest babyface reaction on the roster? Jey Uso came out to yeet with the crowd, providing a clear contrast between himself and the odious New Day. It didn’t hurt that Jey quickly turned on his former friends and informed them – and the fans – that New Day sucks.

With that, Kofi and Xavier left. It was a simple, yet effective measure to continue the audience training and further establish New Day as a heel act without revealing new theme music or gear, or even having Kingston and Woods do much else beyond show up and try to speak.

The training wheels are going to need to come off really soon though, as they’re treading water and there’s going to be diminishing returns on this shtick before too long.