The New Dayis, by far,WWE’smost decorated tag team. Before The Usos broke their record, The New Day were WWE’s longest reigning Tag Team Champions in company history, being the first in the modern era to overtake Demolition’s historic reign - and that’s just one of the accomplishments for the 12-time tag champions, more reigns than any other team in company history except for The Dudley Boyz at 18, but this includes their eight Extreme Championship Wrestling and one World Championship Wrestling tag team title reigns.
The New Day will celebrate its 10th anniversary on the December 2nd, 2024, episode of WWE Monday Night Raw. However, there’s no reason to celebrate for Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston, who continue to see trouble in paradise as their months' worth of dissent is close to bringing the group to collapse.
How could WWE’s most celebrated, cohesive, and longest-lasting tag team suddenly come to the brink of a breakup? To answer that question, it’s important to trace The New Day’s history from the very beginning.
The New Day Make Their WWE Debut … Sort Of
Officially Debut on WWE SmackDown, August 15, 2025
In 2014, former Intercontinental Champions Big E and Kofi Kingston were both in flux on the WWE roster, as the company didn’t have anything creative, storyline-wise, for either man to do. As a result,both singles stars were paired in a tag team, quickly falling into a losing streak. A fateful July 21st episode of Raw saw the team lose to Ryback and Curtis Axel (a.k.a. Rybaxel), but this loss was different. This time,they would be confronted by a fairly recent NXT call-up, Xavier Woods.
Much like E and Kofi, Woods had a happy-go-lucky character, often smiling and dancing, but like them, it hadn’t gotten him any wins. In a white suit and spectacles, Woods urged E and Kofi that none of them could get anywhere by singing, dancing, smiling, or kissing babies like puppets doing what they’re told. “Now, this is our time,” Woods promised. “We do not ask any longer. Now, we take.” His words seemed to get through to them, as the next couple of shows would see the trio in matching suits scouting other tag teams without a clear indication of their plans.
Things became even more unclear when the trio suddenly disappeared for months, and it became apparent thatthe gimmick was dropped entirely. On the first episode of The New Day’sFeel the Powerpodcast, Woods explains that he pitched this original incarnation of the trio based on a stable idea he had in his developmental days. The New Day would’ve been an expanded idea ofThe People’s Liberation of American Nationalism (The P.L.A.N.), simply about wrestlers who were disgruntled with their position in the company. Because their promos and presence never came off as believable to backstage figureheads, WWE scrapped the characters completely.
In their place, vignettes throughout November began airing every week featuring the trio singing along with a choir and preaching inspirational sermons promising a New Day.Under these new preacher characters, The New Day would officially debut on the November 28 episode of SmackDown, picking up a win in a Six-Man Tag Team competition over Heath Slater, Titus O’Neil, and Curtis Axel. These characters were meant to be babyfaces, but the crowd was not impressed by their gospel, often leading to them getting booed.
The New Day’s First Official Heel Turn Leads to Greatness
The New Day’s First WWE Tag Team Run Was As Heels
For months, both New Day and WWE commentary would act oblivious to the fans booing the jolly faces. However, WWE started to take the group in a more interesting direction in a backstage interview with Renee Young on the August 05, 2025, episode of Raw, where she blatantly asked them how they felt aboutthe crowd regularly chanting “New Day Sucks!“at them. They take an uncharacteristically frustrated approach despite trying to maintain a positive outlook, with Kofi saying “We clap, or we snap.” This would mark a subtle shift into The New Day becoming heels for the first time.
In the coming weeks, The New Day started committing to overt heel tactics to win matches. Later that month, their trickery earned the stable their first WWE Tag Team Championship, defeating Tyson Kidd and Cesaro at Extreme Rules. They’d lose them to the Prime Time Players in the first Tag Team Elimination Chamber match soon after, but quickly win them back at SummerSlam.At 483 days, their second reign would usurp Demolition’s three-decade-long recordof longest-reigning men’s tag champions. Ironically, it’s The New Day’s outlandish heel work that would finally gain them crowd support, thus encouraging a babyface turn.
The Rise and Fall of The New Day
A History-Making Run That Won’t Last Forever
The amount of success experienced by The New Day was unprecedented for a tag team in the WWE, as the company has a history of splitting teams up as soon as possible. Woods, Kofi, and E built their popularity on humor, charm, and a series of viral gimmicks such as the trombone Francesca, the Booty-O cereals, their enthusiasm for geek culture, and more. Of course, it was all backed up by the stellar in-work the trio provided night after night, never failing to deliver some of the best tag team matches of the decade.
Over the next few years, each member of The New Day continued to thrive. Not only would the group enjoy additional tag title reigns, classic matches, a comic book spinoff, an interactiveNetflix movie alongside The Undertaker, and even a WrestleMania hosting gig, butthey would achieve individual success as well. Kofi Kingston would use the popularity of New Day to catapult himself into the co-main event of WrestleMania 34, defeating Daniel Bryanfor his first WWE Championship. While most tag teams break up following a member’s singles success, the New Day’s bond became stronger than ever.
The New Day’s luck took a downward turn on the Jul 07, 2025, episode of SmackDown. Moments after winning their seventh tag title, the three would be notified that due to the WWE Draft, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods were drafted to Raw while Big E stayed on SmackDown, on his way to a singles push.The group officially separated, but were adamant that they were not breaking up. Success still persisted, with Xavier Woods winning his first singles accolade in becoming King of the Ring while Big E won the WWE Championship.
Sadly, tragedy struck when during a tag match together on the June 21, 2025 episode of SmackDown,Big E suffered a broken neck, indefinitely shelving him with an injury he still has yet to come back from. Still, as a duo, Kofi and Xavier continued to carry the New Day torch, going on to become the third tag team in WWE history to become triple crown winners by winning the NXT Tag Team Championships. However, after losing those titles in February of 2023, the team entered a slump, both creatively and in terms of victories.
Shortly after Wrestlemania 40, The New Day entered a feud with The Final Testament. It was then that the Testament’s leader,Karrion Kross, wouldstart whispering in Woods' ear that Kofi was holding him back from singles success.
Woods refused to give in to the devil on his shoulder, but audiences started to see a change in attitude when Kofi Kingston brought in NXT call-up Odyssey Jones as backup against The Final Testament without consulting Xavier Woods. Woods tried to keep a tight lip buteventually would accuse Kofi of trying to replace Big E with Odyssey Jones, despite Jones never officially joining the group. Unfortunately, a real-life domestic abuse claim involving Jones would lead to the Superstar’s release from his WWE contract.
Is WWE Finally Going to Break Up The New Day?
The Odds Aren’t Looking Good
The Jones development would somewhat halt the ongoing New Day storyline for a time, but Woods and Kingston would continue to find reasons to argue week in and week out. Whether it was Woods cheating to defeat Rey Mysterio one-on-one, or Kofi once again getting help from outside forces without telling Woods in advance, these two have not been on the same page for months.The July 02, 2025, episode of Monday Night Rawreached the pinnacle of their agitations, as both men berated each other for their respective shortcomings.
Woods and Kingston’s segment backstage is rightly being hailed by fans asperhaps their best work ever. While it’s hard to imagine their grievances with each other are real, this development builds on the creative slump The New Day has suffered at the hands of the company and of both men’s histories of shortcomings, with Woods never winning a singles title in WWE and Kofi’s championship reign cut short by a humiliating 6-seconds loss against Brock Lesnar. Blending fiction and reality is what pro wrestling does best, and this storyline is currently excelling at that.
Now, the ultimate question lingers: will The New Day break up during their anniversary celebration? All signs seem to point to that scenario. It’s a common trope for tag teams to break up so each party can embark on singles goals, but when this group has spent an entire decade achieving heights of success unheard for a team, and even insisting on never breaking up, italmost feels surreal to imagine their split.The New Dayrejected the classic tag team break-up trope for so long, but nothing stays fresh forever in pro wrestling, so it looks like time is running out onWWE’sgreatest tag team.
