WWE Superstar Xavier Woods was a recent guest on the latest episode of the PodNasty Wrestling Podcast.

Woods spoke about the recent WWE: Behind the Curtain documentary on ESPN, scrapping the “militant black” gimmick, original plans for the New Day, why he would rather be a PhD than a WWE World Heavyweight champion, and more. You can read a few excerpts and listen to the interview below:

Why the militant stable was dropped:

“Wrestling is a never-ending storybook so sometimes you start going one direction, but the beauty of it is we could go in whatever direct we want but things just changed. For what reason, I’m not exactly sure, but it’s WWE and you kind of just go with the flow.

It ’s one of the things you learn when you get hired is it is an ever-changing and ever-evolving living breathing workism, so the best way to stay afloat is to just go along with the things that are occurring around you. I’m not sure why things changed, but in light of recent developments of New Day it’s great that they did because to me rather than someone just coming out and the character just being there, it’s nice to be able to see that character evolve over time.”

Xavier Woods Talks The New Day, Why He Thought They’d Be Good Babyfaces:

“We had a couple of different schools of thoughts. We thought this would occur, that people would be into it, because it’s maybe one of the only positive things on television, because you turn on the news and there’s death, murder, car crashes and everything. Here’s a positive thing with three guys, all college educated, all college athletes, all very eloquent so we’ll preach a positive message like ‘do well in life and go to school, make sure you work out you could be big and strong like E, make sure if you stretch a lot you can be flexible and agile like Kofi and make sure if you read your books you could be smart like Woods.’”

And then we realized after a few months it turned into ‘people don’t like those who are happy. So it’s kind of like a play on society, essentially, people of American society. Back in the 80s, if someone’s happy, someone’s doing well, someone’s getting hardships, you cheered for that person. But now it’s 2015, and they don’t like that. They want someone who’s grimy and who doesn’t like people and who doesn’t smile and isn’t happy and wants to punt a puppy across a football field. If that happened, people would be watching and it would get 3 million views on YouTube because it’s something that’s horrible so essentially society has created this thing where people like to see car wrecks, and they want to see a hot mess and they want to see a fall from grace. So if you don’t have those things people are going to boo you because that’s not entertaining to them, they want to see a mess, they want to see somebody fall on the sidewalk and bust their lip on the ground. They don’t like nice things.”

Woods On Why He’d Choose a PhD over a WWE World Heavyweight Championship:

“I feel like we have the opportunity as WWE Superstars to make some sort of impact on lives whether it’s one kid or whether it’s an adult. Yes, guys have been WWE World Heavyweight champion, and it’s amazing, I take nothing from that at all. But if there’s a kid who’s out there in the world watching wrestling and they see me and they know I have my PhD while I was wrestling, that could possibly inspire them to not drop out of school, to not drop out of college, to go and obtain that type of educational status, and that to me means a lot more.”

I think Woods is pretty off-base with his assessment of why New Day didn't get over as faces. It's not that people don't like nice things, or want "grimy" characters. It's just that, when somebody's always nice and always smiling, they come across as fake and forcing it. Daniel Bryan got over as a positive character because he was genuinely happy most of the time, but knew when to be serious, too. We saw New Day and we saw three guys who've been held down (or, at least, weren't as successful as many thought they should be) but were pretending to be the happiest people in the world. It felt phony, where their current gimmick feels more realistic because, if this interview is Xavier's real opinion, then there's probably some truth to it.

I actually agree with him completely. Daniel Bryan doesn't count because he was still not a happy successful guy. He was a guy who had to work his way up, who played a great heel, who was shot down a hundred times (IE: hit the sidewalk), etc. He's anything but positive.

^ What? I'm really trying, but I can't make sense of what you said and how it agrees with Woods' comments. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point.

Xavier said people don't want to see happy characters, and you said Bryan doesn't count because he's three-dimensional (which was my argument for how a positive, upbeat character can be successful). Bryan's usually smiling, but not when it would be inappropriate, which is why he seems like a real person while face New Day, or Brodus Clay, or whomever seem like plastic good guys with no real emotions. Hell, even John Cena knows when to stop smiling and treat things seriously (though he could do it a bit more often, imo).