Earl Hebner used to call me 'Tiger,' so I went with the last name Woods because I thought it was funny. I'm a huge fan of X-Men and, just, intelligence in general, and the leader in charge is named Prof. Charles Xavier. I took Xavier from him and put together the two names.
— Xavier Woods
People from over 160 countries come to WrestleMania, and you get to feel the energy from people all over the world when we're in the ring doing our thing that day.
Back in the '80s, if someone's happy, someone's doing well, someone's getting hardships, you cheered for that person.
For me, there are so many art forms in wrestling. There's the Ring of Honor art, the New Japan art, so whatever you enjoy, there's a facet of wrestling out there for you to watch.
One of the things that's interesting about black culture is we don't know about our heritage and about our genealogy because it was taken from us. So all that we have is we're black. That's where we start.
You've seen 'Shrek,' right? It's a children's movie, but there are adult jokes in there if you're paying attention and you're old enough to get it. That's what we try to do with the New Day.
Without video games, I don't think I'd be where I am today with anything else in life.
It's a briefcase with my laptop, my DSLR, a microphone, my mouse, and rechargeable batteries. I could set up right here and film an episode if I wanted to. And that's how I like to keep it, small and compact, so I can do it anywhere in the world.
I know, for me, that I love wrestling, and I love games, so there was already an overlap there because all of my friends growing up were the same.
People don't really know, before we debuted on TV as The New Day, we did shows on the weekends at the live events for maybe six months as The New Day just so we could get our chemistry down and see what works in the ring, what didn't.
The unicorns happened because I legitimately enjoy unicorns; as a kid, one of my favorite movies was called 'The Last Unicorn.'
I myself enjoy being a bad guy more because it's way fun for me.
I'm really into this anime called 'Food Wars.'
I sleep a lot in the airplanes. That is where I get majority of my sleep.
I have no desire to go to work and not work with my friends.
I didn't have very many friends growing up. I was very much a nerd. I read comic books, and I wanted to do well in school.
I ended up going to Furman. The campus was beautiful. It was, like, one of the top 10 college campuses on the planet. And they had dropped a ton of money into their psychology program, and I already knew that's what I wanted to major in. I loved the people there; I very much felt at home.
I used to live with, like, Tyler Breeze and Rick Victor when I lived in Florida. Yeah, Breeze is, like, one of my best friends in the business.
If there's a kid who's out there in the world watching wrestling, and they see me, and they know I have my Ph.D. 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.
Wrestling is a never-ending storybook, so sometimes you start going one direction, but the beauty of it is we could go in whatever direction we want, but things just changed.
When people are surprised I can do things is always fun. Just because I have muscles doesn't mean I don't play video games.
As African-Americans, we don't start with a blank slate, while other people may. In our position, there's always some sort of stereotype that is being scrutinized or that is being assumed when we come through the curtain.
Stay in school, kids, and make sure that you play a lot of 'Street Fighter,' especially if you're going to play someone at a tournament in front of a lot of people, so you don't get beat.
On some very real levels, seeing what has happened to guys and girls who have been in the wrestling business when they have to transition out is hard. It's very difficult.
Honestly, I've always loved having tag teams since I was little, so I've always kind of been focused on wanting to be a tag team champion.
I'm very much of the school of thought that when you want something, and you think about it hard enough, and you put all your efforts and resources into it, that's it something that can definitely be achieved.
'Raw' is a live show and, as we always say, anything can happen at any given moment at any given time.
Being vocal and listening for sounds when we go out - that is what makes wrestling. If people were just silent, that's the worst thing you could hear.
My favorite anime of all time is 'Yu Yu Hakusho.' And this is because when I was living with my parents before I moved to Florida for NXT - which was FCW at the time - I just had a ton of anime that I was watching, and one of them was 'Yu Yu Hakusho.' So, I had seen it as a kid, but I never watched it all the way through.
I do a bunch of cosplay stuff with a guy by the name of Michael Mosley. He's fantastic. We always go to an event called DragonCon together every September.
I've got two undergraduate degrees: one is a Bachelor's Degree in Philosophy and a Master's in Psychology. I'm gunning for my Ph. D. in Psychology but that's currently on hold.
I don't remember a group in wrestling that hasn't turned on itself. Or they'll turn and then come back and be a group again.
There are so many different types of games, so it helps bring people closer together.
I can have a job where I get paid to travel around the world in shiny pants. Why would anyone want to do anything else?
Video games - just like wrestling - that's always been my happy place.
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.
I'm drawn to Canadian people for some reason.
Anytime anyone complains about wrestling, it's so annoying to me because people come off as these entitled infants. Because in reality, wrestling hurts so bad. And then we're hurting ourselves to entertain the masses.
I think the main thing as far as the chemistry goes is that there's a lot of groups that say they want to be tag teams, but they're always wanting to elevate themselves instead of the group.
I wish I was agile like Spider-Man and everything we do that draws on the childhood inspirations and the adulthood inspirations, for that matter. They're definitely the reason how I am, how I am today, because I was a smaller kid who was a nerd.
I, throughout my life, wanted to be a wrestler. I also wanted to be a kickboxer. And I also wanted to make video games. Obviously, kickboxing - not happening. Ever. I do not want to get Muay Thai'd in the face!
Videogames tell stories on good and evil, and so does the WWE, so that's the core of both things.
I used to always like the tag teams because you can do, to me, more entertaining, cooler, crazier stuff when there's more bodies in the ring.
I was really into more over-the-top, entertaining kind of characters, larger-than-life types of things. That's the part of wrestling that I really enjoyed.
If you were to explain The New Day to a new fan, you can't do it.
I listen to this mix of smooth jazz, independent hip-hop, chiptunes, and anime music.
I have no desire to leave New Day. We can pursue a singles title while being together. Besides, if you have two friends willing to help you, that's gonna make it easier for you to become a singles champion.
I want everything. So my next goal - and this is the first time saying this - is to gain enough money to whatever means and create a mobile games studio.
I didn't have any social skills at all, but my mom noticed I was way more vocal when I had a Nintendo controller in my hand. So she'd set up play dates with other kids to come over and play video games.
Normally, if we're staying in a town before a show, I'll go to a barcade. Those are dive bars that have tons of arcades, since there aren't a ton of arcades where kids can put quarters in games and actually have that kind of arcade experience.
