The New Day
By Scott Keith on 10 June 2015
Hey Scott, just thinking about the New Day and wondering if you could think of a wrestler or wrestlers who went from getting "X-Pac heat" to being legit over with the crowd in a pretty short time span? Back around Royal Rumble time, the New Day got booed and it was never really good heat. It was more like "Ugh, these guys again?" Almost to the point where rumors were going around that the whole gimmick would just be dropped. A few tweaks to their gimmicks and now they are one of the better acts on RAW and people love to boo these guys. In fact I would love the idea of Kingston winning the Money In the Bank briefcase and using the "Freebird Rule" and basically all being co-holders of the briefcase. That would actually be a fresh idea and pretty entertaining, plus their victory celebration alone would be worth it. However I'm guessing we're getting the more meh outcome with a Roman Reigns victory instead. Back to my original question, can you think
of any other wrestler or wrestlers who went from getting X-pac heat to being pretty over with the crowd in a short time span like the New Day has? Only one I can think of is Rocky Maivia but that was a major tweak to the character and nearly a repackaging. Can you come up with anyone else?
Well Rocky is obviously the gold standard for that sort of thing, but I'd also submit Main Eventer HHH as another example. Won the title in September '99 in groan-inducing manner despite no one taking him seriously as a top guy, to the point where they switched the title to Big Show at Survivor Series. But the Stephanie wedding and Vince feud turned him around so quickly and so dramatically that they had to put the title on him for a third time by January, at which point he was immediately a tippy-top guy for life.