WWE Offered More Than 50 Percent Pay Cut To New Level

Kofi Kingston of The New Level has revealed that WWE asked him and Xavier Woods (aka Austin Creed) to accept a pay cut of more than 50 percent before they left the company and joined AEW.

Kingston and Woods, formerly known in WWE as New Day, left the company in May after more than a decade, following the reported contract discussions. They debuted in AEW at All In 2026 as The New Level, using the names Kofi and Austin Creed.

Speaking on The Ariel Helwani Show, Kofi addressed reports that he and Creed had been offered a 50 percent reduction under a restructured WWE deal(via F4WOnline). “I don’t know exactly what’s out there. I will say, it was more than 50 percent, which a lot of people don’t know,” Kofi said.

Creed said the proposed pay cut was when the two men began discussing whether they needed to move on. “That was the first time that we had the conversation. We realized, like, ‘Hey, we gotta go, right?’ This doesn’t work for us,” Creed stated. “This isn’t what we want to be doing. To Kofi’s point, we want to work. We want to be able to have these matches and fulfill these goals and dreams.”

Kofi said compensation was “definitely a big part” of their decision. However, he said joining AEW’s tag team division appealed to them because they felt tag team wrestling was not being treated as a priority in WWE. Meanwhile, the thought of joining AEW’s tag team division excited the duo.

“This is so like arrogant to say, but I’m just going to say it. Like, I don’t mean it in a cocky way, but when you have the career that we’ve had collectively as a group, you feel like, you know what I mean, you would not have to be in a position where you’d have to go and bet on yourselves again. But here we were,” Kofi said. “We found ourselves in that exact position. And as a father, if we didn’t try to do this, if we didn’t follow our hearts, how could I go back and tell my kids to go follow their dreams? To believe in themselves, to block out what people are saying about you or how they feel about you, and believe in yourself. Like, if we didn’t do that, I would feel like such a hypocrite.”

Despite his comments, Kofi said he was not bitter toward WWE. After their debut at AEW All In 2026 at Wembley Stadium, the duo joined Swerve Strickland and won the AEW World Trios Championship in a Trios Roulette Royale.