Big E reveals Vince McMahon's reaction to The New Day 'taking the knee' in support of the BLM movement
One half of the SmackDown Tag-Team Champions, Big E recently spoke on The Sports Bubble with Jensen Karp podcast. The former IC Champion Big E spoke about a multitude of topics but focused on the ongoing Black Lives Movement in the United States which gained traction after the unfortunate incident with George Floyd took place.
On an episode of SmackDown, Big E and his tag-team partner Kofi Kingston took a knee inside the ring to show their solidarity with the movement. This gesture on their part led to speculation that the moment was not pre-approved and that the tag-team Champions received pushback from WWE afterwords.
Big E reveals Vince McMahon's reaction
So, we've done a few things, and I think we're going to continue to use some things like you mentioned, taking a knee, to bring attention to this movement on SmackDown. And the nice thing is, you know, we ran it by Vince McMahon, our boss, and he approved it. We got no pushback there.
(H/T Credit: Wrestlinginc)
Big E also spoke about the support that he received from the company. The company allowed them to post a video from their podcast which spoke about the matter because The New Day believed that it was a message that needed to reach everyone.
We got a lot of support from the company with the podcast and we can't typically put out video, not the whole video because of the way the contract is with our podcast, but they were so supportive with us putting up the whole conversation because we felt like it was important for people to listen to this hour plus, and to see it and to see our faces and see our expressions.
So we were thankful that we got support from the company too, but we've done different things
Big E discussed how they have themselves been learning more and more by reading and gathering information from different sources. The New Day also wear BLM armbands to show their support.
Like you said, we put the names of the victims, of these people who lost their lives and shouldn't have. Put them on armbands: Shukri Abdi, Breonna Taylor, Tamla Horsford, Ryan Milton and so many more. We've tried to do a lot, we're trying to learn ourselves with reading.