Woods talks about his love of wrestling and video games, how he ended up starting his UpUpDownDown YouTube channel, his favorite games and much more. You can read a few excerpts below:
Woods talks about how UpUpDownDown became a reality:
“Originally, I wanted to do a Travel Channel show. 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. Barcades are for those people who lived through that generation, and I pitched a show for the [WWE] Network where I’d go to these different places each week.
We merged the ideas and came up with a YouTube gaming channel. I always have my carrying case–it’s called a GAEMS case, and has my PS4 in it and a built-in TV–and so we put together a gaming channel. The first couple episodes where me and Kofi [Kingston] playing FIFA, and the loser had to eat hot peppers. It was stuff that we were already doing, but now we’re filming it and putting on a little punishment at the end. We’ve been branching out and connecting with other YouTubers, other arcades, and other gaming people. We’re learning what’s good, what’s bad, the connections to use with the systems and TVs, and it’s been a very eye-opening experience.”
Why he took to video games as a child:
“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 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. She said I was like a circuit that was finally completed because I was holding a controller, and another kid was holding a controller, and I finally connected with somebody else and opened up my doors of social activity.”
What he takes from his YouTube channel’s success:
“It’s very humbling, and it’s different from wrestling. Wrestling is this living, breathing thing, but I didn’t birth it. So being a part of Raw and Smackdown is amazing, and it’s my life dream to be able to do it, but my creativity and hard work has created the ‘UpUpDownDown’ channel. When people tell me they appreciate it, that really means a lot to me. It’s essentially been built by a gamer for gamers.”
Would Xavier Woods consider himself a nerd?
“I’m a full-fledged nerd, but nerd isn’t a dirty word any more. I sit and watch anime constantly, I play video games constantly, and I have my nose in comic books constantly. I’m part of a group called the NPC Collective. It’s the Nerdy People of Color Collective. It’s me and a rapper by the name of Mega Ran, the only rapper licensed by Capcom, and a bunch of other people who do nerd rap. We rap about video games and electronics, and our goal is to show young black kids that it’s OK to be nerdy.
I grew up in Inglewood, California for the first couple years of my life, and growing up in the ‘hood is difficult as a kid. We want to show kids there are people like you in the positions in life you want to be in. Showing kids they can do what they want to do and be great at it, that’s the stuff that means the most to me.”
