Sort of like an actor’s resume?

Xavier: No, like I was going into a Fortune 500 company. That’s what my dad explained to me. He was like, “What do you have?” I said, “A DVD.” He’s like, “Where’s your resume?” He didn’t get, like, oh, it’s wrestling. But when he explained that to me I was like, why would we not have this in wrestling? It’s professional.

Kofi: Then that was the thing, too. People were like, “Pssh, he’s got a resume!” But really, why wouldn’t you have a resume? We all should have resumes!

Xavier: So fast forward now and I go to Florida Championship Wrestling. I’m on vacation in Florida, find FCW, do the same thing, and Kofi’s there practicing again. So I just always remember seeing Kofi’s face. Anyways, I wrestle around, wrestle around, finally get to FCW and I meet E. We hung out a few times, we were cool, and we were actually in a group together in FCW. It was me, him, Abraham Washington, and Byron Saxton. I won’t explain the group because it was kind of intense.

Big E: No, I think we can explain it. So the acronym was originally the C.L.A.N.

Xavier: Citizen’s Liberation of American Nationals.

Big E: Then Dusty Rhodes thought, just the term “clan” at all, even if you spell it with a C… So we changed it to the P.L.A.N.

Xavier: People’s Liberation.

Big E: So we were kind of a militant group. We wore white and red, and it was a faction that we pitched and did for what, maybe a month or so? But we never even did it on an FCW house show. It got killed rather quickly. But I think we had great promos at promo practice.

Xavier: That was my first instance of actually working closely with E and trying to build promos and create characters and storylines and stuff. So when I finally got to the main roster, Rusev had been running through us.

Big E: And who do you mean, “us”?

Xavier: Black people.

Big E: Honestly. Yeah.

Xavier: There was one pay-per-view and it was me and R-Truth in a handicap match against Rusev, and Rusev just annihilated me before the match even started and just wrestled Truth. So at that point I was like, I’ve worked my tail off trying to get to the main roster, finally got there and nothing was going on. I was like, what am I doing? So it got to the point where I was like, long shot, let’s try something. Hey, everybody that Rusev has ran through, we should make the new Nation of Domination.* So I went and told the writers and they were like, “Yeah, sure, go tell Vince.” I was like, “Thanks for the help.” But it caused me to realize, okay, I can’t just go on a random, crazy hair of a plan. I need something that is real.

You needed to flesh it out.

Xavier: So I started thinking about things, trying to get something going for myself, realizing that Nation of Domination is not the way I needed to go or wanted to go.

Big E: Well, I mean, when we first appeared on TV that was kind of the direction.

I was going to say, at least from the fan’s perspective, everyone sort of labeled the New Day as Nation of Domination 2.0 when the vignettes first began and you first debuted on TV.

Xavier: It was a little inspired. That was definitely the original inspiration.

To be fair, that comparison was somewhat lazy on the fan’s part, though.

Xavier: Yeah, like, the Wyatts aren’t the Godwinns, right? So no one ever says that.

Big E: But I mean, when you break down the promo, I get why people drew that conclusion.

Xavier: I think that’s because of certain social stereotypes, but anyways. So that is when I talked to E. You know, the easiest way to get over and do something impactful when you’re already on the roster is to band together and make a raft so you can float. E just lost the Intercontinental title, he was kind of floating around, as well. So we started cutting promos together, trying to figure stuff out, and we realized it felt weird as a tag team. We needed something else. So I said, “We need Kofi,” and went and talked to him. And Kofi was so down because he was always having awesome matches with people, but never really put into a major storyline or anything. He’s a great wrestler that people loved but there was nothing ever really given to him.