At Battleground, Kingston and Woods, representing The New Day, defeated The Usos to win the SmackDown Tag Team Championships for the first time. Though Big E did not wrestle himself, due to The New Day defending the titles under the Freebird Rule, Big E is also recognized as a champion. The New Day lost the tag titles back to The Usos at SummerSlam. The Usos held the titles for about a month before The New Day won them back on "SmackDown Live" that September. At Hell in a Cell, Big E and Woods took on The Usos in the namesake match but lost the championships. On the October 23 edition of Raw, The New Day along with other talents of "SmackDown" ambushed the "Raw" wrestlers. They again appeared on the November 6 episode of "Raw" in the crowd, which led to the distraction of Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose and costing them the tag titles. On the November 14 edition of "SmackDown", The Shield led an attack with "Raw" Superstars and invaded "SmackDown" similar to the one that led by SmackDown and attacked everyone including New Day. At Survivor Series, The New Day lost to The Shield. The New Day failed to regain the titles from The Usos at Clash of Champions in a fatal-4-way tag team match also involving the team of Rusev and Aiden English, and Chad Gable and Shelton Benjamin. Big E entered the 2018 Royal Rumble match as the ninth entrant but failed to win the match after being eliminated by Jinder Mahal.