The New Day explains the origin of some of their pre-match rituals.
In a bonus scene from WWE 24: Big E (seen above), the Intercontinental Champion spoke about how he does things primarily because he thinks they'll be funny. He adds that if he doesn't get yelled at, he's likely to continue doing it.
Xavier Woods then shared why the group come to the ring with pancakes. He said the following:
"People have asked, why did you guys have pancakes? We had a lumberjack tag match, but there's three of us. That means that one of us is not in the match, so I went with my lumberjack cosplay. Then E goes, 'we need something else. Flapjacks.' [I said] Pancakes? He said, yeah. So we got pancakes and the next week we said, that was really fun throwing pancakes around, do you wanna do it again?' So it evolved into us having pancakes."
Kofi Kingston revealed that he was told to be more serious and drop the pancake gimmick when he won the WWE Championship, but instead, doubled down and started carrying them in his belt. Here is what he said:
"When I became WWE Champion they were like [in a very deep voice], 'oh, well now you got to go out and you got to be more serious. You're the Champion now.' It's like, nah bro, imma put the pancakes in my title actually."
One of the other entrance traditions that developed has been Big E throwing his coat at Corey Graves after he gets in the ring. The announcer says that he doesn't know the genesis of it beyond the fact that he would say disparaging things about the group semi-regularly. He believes this way just their way of getting some vengeance, making sure it happens on national television.
Xavier Woods provided the following explanation:
"Big E threw his jacket at Corey Graves when we do our entrances because it was funny to him. We were hitting him with pancakes before and E wanted to up the ante, so the logical progression would be let me throw this bulky, heavy-ass jacket."
According to Big E, there was no rhyme or reason to any of it, except for the fact that it was funny to him.
The Intercontinental Champion is scheduled to return to Friday Night SmackDown on March 12 after sustaining an injury at the hands of Apollo Crews.
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