Ex-WWE Champion Recalls The Rock Giving Great Advice
Kofi Kingston is a former WWE Champion who recently spoke about how The Rock shared some great pro wrestling advice with him.
In the early days of The New Day, the trio consisting of Kofi Kingston, Big E and Xavier Woods were heels. They were known for being obnoxious in terms of how they looked, what they said and how they dressed.
That made The New Day perfect foils for The Rock on the January 25th, 2016 edition of WWE Raw. The Rock told The New Day he knew who they were – the tag champs, entertaining and they were wearing llama penises on their head. Woods replied to that by saying they were unicorn horns.
As he continued, The Rock said they look like three chocolate cornholes running their mouths. Rock also mocked Big E for being so strong and so nerdy – it’s like The Incredible Hulk banged Urkel. The Rock suggested they come into the ring so that Rock can shove that trombone up their candy asses.
There was a bit of physicality with The Usos helping out their cousin The Rock, who hit Woods with a People’s Elbow. It was actually at WrestleMania 32 a short time later when The New Day turned babyface and have been in a babyface role since then.
During an interview with DraftKings, Kofi Kingston spoke about his history as a Rock fan and what it was like working with the People’s Champion.
“We actually got to go toe to toe with the Rock. For me getting insulted by The Rock was really cool because in college before I went to bed every night, I would look at my Rock poster. I would jump and do a jumping elbow into my dormitory bed and pull my sheets up. That’s how I went to bed.
We brought our A game he brought his A game and he’s insulting us. We had these unicorn horns on our heads and they light up. He said that they were llama penises. You get a Rock promo cut on you, as a kid who grew up watching the Rock cut these Rock promos on other people. I’m like ‘Wait now it’s happening to me. Ooh I should be mad but this is really cool.’”
The Rock Advised Kofi Kingston “Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously”
Kofi would go on to speak about some specific advice he was given from The Rock.
“We had done some media together. I remember like being backstage I just asked him. I said ‘Hey you have any advice or whatever’ and he’s like ‘yeah just don’t take yourself too seriously’ He said ‘Don’t worry about like oh you gotta go out there and look strong.’ At the time I had no idea what he was talking about.
I think a lot of people want to be the big tough guy all the time to the point where you’re like ‘Oh well I can’t have someone say something about me and look stupid out there because oh I’m too tough’ versus ‘Hey let this person say something to me so that I can say something to them so that the crowd and the people can be entertained’
We’re all trying to work together to tell a story. So I didn’t really understand that. Then you fast forward to the New Day and here we are again going out as grown men twerking and shaking our hips and gyrating and wearing these like crazy flamboyant colors.”
Another former WWE Champion, Jinder Mahal, called The Rock a “class act” to work with when they had their altercation on WWE Raw earlier this year.