The New Day may now be loved Tag Team Champions, but it wasn’t too long ago that they were anything but.

In 2014, WWE created The New Day by taking three individual wrestlers—Big E, Kofi Kingston, and Xavier Woods—and putting them together into a positive-messaged threesome. (Ewww...dirty.) The trio initially started showing up together that July, but the group wouldn’t make their official debut until November.

For some reason—and much to the confusion of...well, everyone—The New Day debuted with a African-American gospel gimmick. Their promos, which featured a full gospel choir clapping and singing, came across as stilted, awkward, and bizarre, as if the company was trying hard to convince viewers that these were indeed the good guys they should be rooting for. Here’s Xavier Woods’ promo to give you an idea:

Needless to say, few people were excited for their debut. In fact, many African-American fans felt the characters were borderline racist. Fans like this guy:

And this guy:

To be honest, it’s hard to argue with them, especially since I myself—as a boring old white man—also felt there was a subtle racist undertone going on.

But then a funny thing happened: Big E, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods ceased to give two fucks about what people thought. They strayed from the script, said whatever the fuck was on their minds, and—most importantly—made people laugh.

Suddenly, the failing experiment that was The New Day—an experiment nearly everyone had written off—started to pay off. They were no longer baby-faced gospel good guys. Instead they were hilarious, ridiculous, and completely over-the-top. And during that process, they transitioned from faces to heels.

The rest is history.

But before they marched down to the ring with their unicorn horns raised high, the guys of The New Day had some very different personas. Here’s a glimpse into each member’s history.

Kofi Kingston

At 34, Kingston (real name Kofi Nahaje Sarkodie-Mensah) is the old pro of the group. After tackling the independent circuit in 2006, he soon found himself signing a contract with WWE. He made his way through their developmental territories, including Deep South Wrestling (DSW) and Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW), finally landing his first professional match on ECW in January 2008. Later that year, he was drafted to Raw where, in his first match, he defeated Chris Jericho for the Intercontinental Championship. In these early years, WWE played up Kingston’s Jamaican shtick... even though he was born more than 5,000 miles away from Jamaica, in Ghana, West Africa. He sported dreadlocks (that’s Jamaican, right?) and his entrance music was, you guessed it, reggae. He even faked an accent during interviews.

Kingston, who in real life is a huge fan of reggae music (Damian Marley in particular), supposedly had a hand in the creation of his character. But as his star continued to rise in the WWE he quietly lost the Jamaican shtick. Nowadays, Kingston is better known for his interesting ways of avoiding elimination in Royal Rumble matches.

Big E Langston

Big E (real name Ettore Ewen) got his start as a professional powerlifter. In 2010, he broke four Florida state records in his class, completing a 611-pound squat, a 490-pound bench press and a 749-pound deadlift. To be read: Don’t fuck with this dude. But that level of strength doesn’t always equate to good wrestling, and so Langston spent three years in FCW before being brought up to NXT in 2012. He would be there less than six months before making the jump to Raw, where he would play the role of an enormous and feared brute. As a heel, Langston portrayed a bodyguard to AJ Lee who had a storyline boyfriend in Dolph Ziggler at the time. In standard heel fashion, Langston kicked the shit out of all the fan favorites—John Cena, Daniel Bryan—thus solidifying his villainous cred.

But after a defeat at the hands of CM Punk in October 2013, Langston turned face. A month later, he’d defeat Curtis Axel to win the Intercontinental Championship. In May 2014, at Extreme Rules, Big E lost the belt to Bad News Barrett. Two months later, his character would become one part of a three-man tag team.

Xavier Woods

Woods may be the newbie of the group, but he’s had more previous incarnations than Kingston or Langston combined. In 2005, Woods began his wrestling career at NWA Anarchy as Austin Creed, a nod to (some might argue rip-off of) Carl Weathers’ portrayal of Apollo Creed in Rocky. In 2007, he started appearing as Rasheed Lucius “Consequences” Creed at TNA, where he would team up with Ron “The Truth” Killings. Get it? Truth and Consequences? Hey, no one ever claimed wrestling was rocket science!

In April 2010, Watson brought the Consequences character to New Japan Pro Wrestling, but his time on the other side of the Pacific didn’t last long. In July, WWE announced they had signed Watson to a developmental contract. NXT would prove to be fertile ground for Watson’s creativity. As a huge fan of ‘90s pop culture, he would often incorporate many of his fanboy loves into his costume and gimmick. Unfortunately, that stopped when he got bumped up to the main roster at the end of 2013. He initially partnered up with R-Truth, but at the beginning of 2014 their tag team would disband as each Superstar pursued singles competition. That wouldn’t last long though, as a new day (and easily Woods’ most popular run) was right around the corner.