The Sad Dawning of a New Day

On the July 21 episode of Monday Night Raw, Kofi Kingston and Big E took on Ryback and Curtis Axel. RybAxel won the match fairly decisively. As Kingston and Big E stood in the ring talking to each other about the loss, Xavier Woods made his way to the ring. Woods grabbed a mic and delivered the following promo:

“Everybody listen! I need you to pay attention to what I’m about to say. This is exactly what I have been talking about. You cannot move ahead by shaking hands, kissing babies, singing and dancing, like a puppet. You cannot move ahead by always doing what you’re told. Now…this is our time. This is our place. It is time for us to find focus. It is up to us to find order. Together it is our time to find purpose. Because we do not ask any longer…now, we take.”

Kingston began nodding in approval almost immediately, and Big E got on board as Woods finished speaking. The trio began working together, and the next night on Main Event, Kingston and Big E crushed Heath Slater and Titus O’Neil. But, this being WWE, since the group didn’t have 100% fan support after one match, they were shoved to the back burner. They continued working together at house shows, but on Raw and Smackdown they were clearly not working on the same team, although their ring attire always seemed to match.

What the Woods Factions could have been...

Then, a few weeks ago, WWE began airing pre-taped vignettes featuring Xavier Woods dancing in front of a gospel choir. The tag line at the end said a “New Day was coming.” A week later Kofi Kingston got in on the act. Another week went by and Big E started appearing in these videos. A New Day, it appeared, was upon us. And good grief has it been a disappointment.

Xavier Woods promo about it being their time to focus and take, which bore all the hallmarks of a turn into heel or tweener territory, was basically scrubbed from history. Instead, WWE resorted to the worn out trope of casting three black men as southern African-American evangelists. There was a design, it seems, that was set to cast the Woods Faction as angry, almost militant, black men tired of being held back by their gimmicks. But after the continual uproar and fallout from Ferguson, Missouri, it appears WWE decided to scrap that plan for fear of offending anyone.

So a new gimmick was rapidly drawn up and thrown on them. They debuted on Smackdown, which WWE doesn’t even care about anymore. Their first match on Raw was ruined almost from the start. As the trio appeared on stage, Jerry “The King” Lawler was quick to announce “Hey look, they’re happy.” Right, God forbid an angry black man not named Mark Henry exist in the WWE. The faction was beaten fairly quickly in a tag team turmoil match, but their defeat paved the way for a feud with Goldust and Stardust.

What WWE Creative turned the Woods Faction into...

I had high hopes for the Woods Faction, but for now it appears as though WWE has set them up to fail.

And of course New Day is going to fail. WWE is so afraid of pushing the envelope by having legitimately angry black men in a group that they reverted to the tried and true, happy-go-lucky African-American southern evangelist trope for the entire group. How they went from Xavier Woods's "now we take" promo to this is sad, but not a mystery.

WWE could've easily capitalized on the group by turning them tweener/heel, but apparently the toddler fan base they are catering to would not accept a heelish Kofi Kingston, so Creative instead took Kofi's happy-in-the-face-of-all-injustice personality and slapped it on Woods and Big E as well. It wouldn’t have been a difficult booking effort, either.

At Survivor Series, a Fatal-4-Way tag team match was contested for the Tag Team Championships. Near the ending point of that match, having the Woods Faction interfere would’ve been the perfect introduction. They could beat down every team in the ring and then, as Woods said in his promo, “take” the Tag Team titles and leave. Over the following weeks they could defend the tag titles with both clean victories and dirty victories. Once their claim to the titles was legitimized, all kinds of feuds would be available. Feuding with the Dust Bros would be just as easy as feuding with the Usos.

You would have a true tweener group. An intense tweener group would've done wonders for the tag team scene and the midcard. Instead, true to the 4-year-old demographic they are targeting, WWE is casting all wrestlers in good or evil mode. There are no tweeners anymore. There are no anti-heroes. That would've been a great slot for the Woods Faction. Instead, we get super-babyface, so-happy-it's-sickening, Kofi, Big E, and Xavier Woods, doing exactly what Xavier Woods said had held them down in the past. So either Woods is far more stupid than his documented education would lead us to believe, or Creative is so afraid of offending someone that they reached into the bag of stereotypes instead of creating something new. It's disgusting how badly Creative has already screwed the pooch on this one.