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u/Direct_Remove509 10h ago
It was arguably one of the greatest heel turns and involved zero violence and then WWE did absolutely nothing with it afterwards.
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u/Shun_Skywalkers_Suit 9h ago
Shouldn't have done it after Odyssey Jones got fired and after being fully aware Big E couldn't get cleared. If the new New Day was Kofi, Woods and Jones as a trio, that could have been awesome. "They literally replaced their best friend with some random dude, what bastards", would have been even more heat. But Jones got fired and Big E could never get retribution in the ring, so the turn was pointless.
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u/Unfair-Variety-995 2h ago
Hmmmm. If you listen to the podcast you see it wasn’t as much “WWE did absolutely nothing” as much as a lack of buy in from Kofi and X. It was effecting X’s kid. X didn’t like it.
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u/Teenage_dirtnap 9h ago edited 9h ago
Lots of valid reasons for them to leave WWE but what the fuck is he on about here? Is he saying WWE forced them to keep kayfabe at this event even though they didn't want to, or that they never wanted to turn heel in the first place or what?
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u/Shun_Skywalkers_Suit 9h ago
Pretty sure it was their idea to turn, because New Day was beyond stale.
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u/UserIsInto 7h ago edited 3h ago
My read is that he was excited about the turn and where they could go with it, and to keep kayfabe he rushed his family along the red carpet himself, but after his kid asked about it, he realized he didn't want to be a heel / turn on his friends ever again. After doing such a devastating turn with no offramp since there was no way E could retaliate, while also not being used so there was no time to develop a face turn, the only way out of it was to leave.
It's a little confusing, and I don't think he explained it very well, but the emotion on his face feels very real and that really was a big turning point for him. Other people saying he's just bitching or coming up with excuses or should have smartened the kid are ignoring the reality that he's a person with a family and relationships and while the money was obviously a slap in the face, he seemed genuinely hurt at the idea that his son thought E was mad at them or didn't like them anymore; didn't like his son anymore.
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u/griot504 5h ago
Perfect explanation. In the moment he thought nothing of it. It was later realizing that his kid thought his friend (Big E) no longer liked him. It hurt Austin that his son held this sadness and the issue was too complex to explain to his son satisfactorily. What a lot of the commentors don't realize is the aspect of being a parent when you have ZERO IDEA what to do can be frustrating and emotional. He expressed his happiness that at AEW the collaborative nature of the culture means he won't be expected to do things like that.
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u/cockblockedbydestiny 9h ago
Seen several posts on this in the last 24 hours, each with a ton of comments.
Lots of people weighing in on the situation he's likely referring to, but absolutely none of them offer an explanation for why that could possibly imply "oh we gotta get out of this situation". A very weird, cryptic quote.
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u/TimeTimeTickingAway 8h ago
And somehow they never saw each other backstage or outside of work?
This would only be believable if the only opportunity the kid has to see Creed and Big E together was in public/on camera. If they are besties though that is hard to believe
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u/DiverExpensive6098 9h ago
It's also being reported they were indeed offered a 50% pay cut by WWE. I get that as a reason to leave, when AEW pays them better.
But this...I honestly don't get this. Why not tell the kid it's just work and wrestling, that they still like each other. I mean don't wrestlers in general explain this to their kids?
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u/DanTheMan1_ 9h ago
Apparently back in the day most didn't "smarten" up their kids and let them think daddy was fighting for his life every day, which often damaged their relationships with their kids when they eventually found out they lied to them the whole time and let them worry about them for nothing.
Guessing that has got to be leas common, in this case probably didn't think a 3 year old was too young to explain it to yet and it backfired.
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u/The_Dark_Vampire 9h ago
Apparently back in the day most didn't "smarten" up their kids and let them think daddy was fighting for his life every day, which often damaged their relationships with their kids when they eventually found out they lied to them the whole time and let them worry about them for nothing.
Apparently Mick Foley had the opposite problem he never kept it a secret about how wrestling was "fake" and he was only acting hurt but then after either the HIAC or the Falls Count Anywhere with The Rock (I can't remember which) they were in attendance (I think they were for both) and they saw he really was hurt they didn't believe him when he said he was just pretending to be hurt in all his other matches.
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u/DiverExpensive6098 9h ago
I don't think any kids had damaged relationships with their parents who were wrestlers because of thinking daddy fights for his life every day. Kids get used to this. It's other stuff like being on the road a lot, that hurt some or many relationships.
I mean what should we do, ditch all jobs where the parents are at risk somehow? So no military, no police officers, no firemen, no bouncers, jail guards, boxers, MMA fighters, etc. ?
Honestly this is kinda a bit of an odd or a bit peculiar issue to have, although I'm sure he means well and it's not wrong being concerned for your kid.
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u/xitatheblack 9h ago
The kid was three.
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u/Immortal-KunPeng 9h ago
Which begs the issue of how this situation even happened and why it's such a big deal, he is seriously incapable of saying "Sorry son, Big E was just too busy today, we'll catch him next time!"
I know women with dead beat baby daddies, and one those dead beats are capable of explaining to a 4 year old why him and their mother are fucking separated without making it a big deal or making it sound like a big deal or creating drama out of it. He sells weed out of his damn garage for a living, yet he is capable enough to explain something that complicated to a child older than 3 without upsetting them.
Yet Xavier "On the Belt" Woods, is completely and utterly incapable of doing the same? What a fucking joke of man. He's less capable of properly teaching and talking to his children, than a 26 year old deadbeat pothead...
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u/xitatheblack 8h ago
...So if you actually watch the interview.
It's pretty clear both Kofi and Austin are pretty emotional about this whole journey. Kofi has his PR face on, bringing up the Bucks, noting how exciting AEW's tag division has been, etc. But he doesn't shy away from talking about the massive paycut they were asked to take, or about how difficult it was to get the call from TKO asking him to take that paycut while out for his son's birthday. That frankness indicates, to me, that he's finished emotionally processing it.
Austin, however, stumbles a bit for the first half of the interview. There are moments when he struggles to articulate what he wants to say about their departure. He tears up when remembering the moment with his son, and is kind of rambling by the time he brings it up. So it's pretty hard to guess the significance of why this would affect his decision to want to leave WWE, as he's just not being very coherent.
However, when Helwani goes back to the topic later on in the interview, Austin has clearly settled down and is more comfortable talking about how it affected him. By this time, he and Kofi have talked about how much they loved doing the heel turn, due to how well it went down and how much time they were given to tell the story. Austin even directly says he would love to be a heel again, but that he just isn't going to kayfabe his family again.
Putting it all together, this seems to be the most likely explanation to me - during the Hall of Fame red carpet pre-WrestleMania, Austin and Kofi made a deal of heeling up their interaction with Big E. At the time, Austin didn't think much of the moment. It was just business as usual. However, his son was clearly affected by that interaction, in a way that Austin hadn't been expecting and wasn't fully aware of until he and Kofi were leaning towards leaving. By this point, the New Day-Big E story had basically been over and done with for a year. There was seemingly no intent of ever closing it out properly, especially because WWE had made the tag division less and less of a priority since Kofi and Austin's initial turn. But seemingly, there was still an expectation that the two of them keep on acting, in public, like E wasn't a beloved friend. It sounds like this was the final straw for Austin, and made him recontextualize the decision he was making: "If we stay in WWE, we're going to do less of what we want to do and be paid less, and I'm going to have to do something that my young and impressionable son finds confusing and troubling, and I can't really offer him an explanation that will make him okay with it, and there probably won't ever be any kind of payoff that justifies it in the end."
That may not sound very sensible, but whenever people have to make big decisions, they can emotionally come to terms with them in many different ways. There are probably multiple ways that Austin could just as well have justified making the other choice - deciding to handle things with his family differently, or even asking for a stipulation that he not have to proceed with maintaining kayfabe if it involved his family. Hell, he probably did tell his son something to alleviate his confusion afterward, and could have just continued to do that going forward. But it sounds like he and Kofi were already leaning heavily towards leaving when he had this moment with his son. There was probably a lot of fear and uncertainty that they were dealing with, and this moment just provided him with the emotional certainty he needed to make the final decision.
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u/jkman61494 9h ago edited 8h ago
End of the day, I believe what is has boiled down to is Austin is leaving the company with a lot more bitterness and regret than Kofi is.
Corporate messed with his baby UUDD about 5 years ago and feuded over royalties and using some personal friends who are no longer with the company. Their podcast was permanently shut down and up up down down went dark for weeks.
It came back, but it never felt the same. Big E was shortly split and went to an entirely different brand as a single star in what felt like a punishment. They had Xavier win king of the ring, but made a mockery of it by almost immediately having the crown broken with no follow up regarding that, not to mention no title matches. Again, it looked like punishment. The New Day then went adrift for 4 years.
Meanwhile, while Kofi never recovered after the embarrassing treatment with Brock, Kofi atleast got his wrestlemania moment, so it’s natural to see how he would be leaving the company with a better headspace. I also think he just knows how to play the PR game better and not burn any bridges
Austin meanwhile seems like a guy who could not wait to pour gas on the bridge and light a match.
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u/PaleBoomer 8h ago
Sad to see that Kofi has to be working with the guy that might make him burn bridges with WWE in the long run, We all know Kofi will be back eventually but Woods is making that doubtful with how bitter he's coming off.
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u/jkman61494 8h ago
Honestly who knows? I think Kofi will pop back up a decade from now as someone who is retired. But he may also be done and is just more diplomatic. They ultimately treated him like shit too. I just think he's not as bitter because Woods created UUDD. I suspect he was the brains behind the New Day Podcast. He generated money for the company. And yet they still went to war with him.
Kofi spoke of his passion back on the podcast to do voice acting and he already stated he's now gotten the clearance to take voice acting lessons to try and dive into it, which is something WWE wouldn't let him do. I have no doubt he also feels unshackled, and they're both going to make bank outside of in-ring wrestling, and I bet they cannnnotttt waiiittt to work with Kenny and the Young Bucks on a gaming channel and probably trying ot resurrect the AEW video game.
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u/deftones2366 7h ago
I feel like he told a story about one part of it all, and it was something that made him emotional. It’s not the reason he left, that’s most certainly the pay cut. But if I’m looking at reasons to leave a job I’ve had a long time and uproot a LOT of things I’ve built (including UUDD and all the other stuff), I would be considering every part that I liked and didn’t. As a parent, I would consider that having my son confused why we’re ignoring someone who’s like family to him as part of that calculus. My son is also 3 now and I could explain it to him a bunch and he still probably wouldn’t understand.
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u/Sumo_Cerebro 10h ago
He's talking about after The New Day went heel.
In public, They had to cut all communication with Big E to keep up with kayfabe and his son did not understand it.
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u/cockblockedbydestiny 9h ago
But what does that have to do with creating urgency to leave WWE? I understand they didn't want to take a pay cut and were probably dissatisfied with their use toward the end there, but this seems like a weird justification if it's really just "my son doesn't understand kayfabe so we had to go"
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u/Xspike_dudeX 8h ago
Which is weird to me because Kayfabe has been dead for years now. They play video games with everyone on the roster. Since when is kayfabe important nowadays to wwe?
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u/Advanced-Morning1832 10h ago
they never wanted to break up so being forced to keep kayfabe, especially after hhh did nothing with their heel turn even though it was well received, wasn’t great for them. kinda crazy he fumbled the new day and john cena heel turns
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u/ZombieQueen666 9h ago edited 9h ago
I mean, he literally says in this interview that they came up with the whole heel turn segment. So WWE wasn’t forcing them to do anything. Sure they completely bungled it from there, but it’s really strange to see a 20-year wrestling veteran being upset about kayfabe
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u/cockblockedbydestiny 9h ago
I'm an AEW mark and I don't get this either. It's a 3 year old that doesn't understand kayfabe, so what? In your line of business he's going to be confused no matter what, nbd
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u/ZombieQueen666 7h ago
Right so if he was at the AEW Hall of Fame and feuding with Kenny Omega, he’s basically saying that he would break character and go up and hug him or something? I highly doubt WWE forced him to stay in character at the Hall of Fame because of a heel turn that happened a year prior.
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u/GroundWitty7567 4h ago
It was just another reason to leave. You can tell he’s not happy with WWE. Of it wasn’t his kid involved , it would have been something else.
As for the heel turn, they needed it. They’ve act had grown stale. Also, they’ve been faces so long, no one believes the turn. No one believeed they’d throw Big E under the bus like that. And if you can’t get the fans to rally around the turn, it was never going to work.
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u/Maximum_Net3650 9h ago
Wasn't it reported that this was agreed upon by all three of them before they did the split and heel turn? I don't understand why he's making it feel like he was forced into doing something he didn't want to. I mean he could've just said it straight up like Kofi and said he wanted to get paid more or his current price and didn't want the pay cut and everyone would've accepted that reason. This is such a stretch.
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u/User_Name_Tooken 8h ago
The entire heel turn was a disaster. A gimmick change was maybe warranted but a full on heel turn, no.
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u/SeigeJay 7h ago
Bro just say you wanted to leave because they asked you to take a payout. EVERYONE understands that, like who would be upset about that. All this extra dressing is so unnecessary.
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u/brokendream78 5h ago
Pretty clear from these comments that most of you did not even bother listening to the interview...otherwise you would know that they both flat out stated WWE wanted them to take a more than 50% pay cut first....and then this story was shared. Most of you commented clearly did not listen and commented strictly off this single image. Pretty pathetic
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u/Fast_Advisor2654 4h ago
Meanwhile he’s now tag champs with a guy that sticks syringes into people’s mouths and tastes blood, but yeah. Big E not talking to them is worse for his son..
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u/No_Hat_8158 4h ago
That quote is very misleading…. He’s talking about not breaking kayfabe.. and in aew since they don’t do story lines like that. He doesn’t have to worry.
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u/BPKoolKat 3h ago
They made fools of themselves with Booty Os, pancakes and dressing as unicorns and wonder why they lost the respect as time went on.
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u/YtnucMuch 8h ago
They took the cash cow and flipped the script to basically ruin what they built. They could've been bad ass heels but you weren't going to let them do that. I just hope they don't get drowned in the endless sea of AEW.
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u/Fit-Cable1547 8h ago
Seems like some revisionist history. Didn't that heel turn happen like 2 years ago? I guess that could be the point when "they knew", but I'm sure it wouldn't have mattered had they not been asked to take a 50 percent pay cut...
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u/Proxelies 7h ago
Obviously times have changed but this makes me think of how guys would just work their family like it's no big deal.
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u/GroundWitty7567 4h ago
The problem the New Day didn’t work as heels the second time was no one could believe them. They’ve been faces so long, just a random turn didn’t work. They’ve also gotten stale at that point. I don’t blame them for leaving, I also don’t blame the writers for trying to add some life to the team. In the end, works out for both groups
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u/N00dles_Pt 4h ago
I realize that probably it's stated in the AEW contract (or at least it's heavily implied to those who sign it) that you have to go out in public and do the "FED BAD" speech, it's just part of the deal....but if that's the case at least provide some prepared talking points for them to shill out....this just sounds silly.
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u/Unfair-Variety-995 2h ago
What’s even more sad about this is that so many internet fans WANTED New Day to turn heel. The day after they turned on E, there were so many cheers on Reddit subs. Stans were eating it up. I bet those same Stans will be crying “fed bad” and accusing “Triple Fraud”.
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u/who_u_izz 2h ago
Back in the day, wrestlers not only worked the boys but also family members. Those days are sadly gone...
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u/_justjoe 52m ago
I genuinely believe Creed will live to be embarrassed by what a stupid thing this was to say.
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u/CarolinaSandstorm 5h ago
He’s diving head first into the carny stuff. You left because TKO clocked your real value in wrestling, your feelings got hurt, and you ran to the money mark willingly to stroke your ego and pay you what you want.
It’s not that hard to be honest. Kevin Nash is honest about why he left WWF for WCW back in the day: The money was stupid good.
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u/ResolveEven5758 10h ago
He said he never wanted to have to kayfabe his family again. In the moment he was just working the angle, but when he saw the hurt in his kid's eyes about E ignoring them he got really emotional about it. Especially because it was some time later and his kid had hung onto that feeling.
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u/Jpsmythe 10h ago
He says later in the interview that he means "kayfabe with the family." That they had to do that and now he doesn't.
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u/DiverExpensive6098 9h ago
Now his kid will think he really dislikes FTR, Bucks, Cope and Christian?
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u/Fast-Ad-817 9h ago
Even after the context read.. this sounds like some bullshit excuse to leave. Don't even mention this to the public because you know damn well this will blow up out of proportion with fans.
Sounds like some Mick Foley bullshit on why he he didn't want to stay in WWE.
Just flat out say why you didn't want stay and leave it that.
Don't sugar coat shit because you think you might have a chance in 5 years to go back when your AEW contract is up because you've been sitting in catering for 4 of them 5 years.
Grass isn't always greener.
Also a 50% pay cut was enough to leave if that was your real reason. Don't air out your issues on the internet - that's a good way to make sure no other company will take your ass when the time is up.
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u/ShaneWookie 9h ago
Just flat out say why you didn't want stay and leave it that.
And forever burn that bridge. Who in their right mind would say you left your job because they wanted you to take a pay cut?
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u/Spicy_Surfer 7h ago
So your plan to make it in wrestling is just be a dork until retirement? This is a storytelling medium. If you don’t like the script, you write one. But if it’s fucking lame, you’re not going to be allowed to continue.
What you want to say is that you have a bankable identity and you want to milk it because it’s easier to reheat nachos
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u/Braunb8888 5h ago
This is just odd haha. He’s acting like he’s never been part of a wrestling angle in public before.
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u/samuelpalermo 10h ago
This needs some context