Austin Creed Says Period Between WWE Exit & AEW Arrival Was Amazing: “I Was Very Burnt Out”

That period of time was ‘amazing,’ says Austin Creed.

Austin Creed was with WWE for almost two decades, and Kofi tallied up 20 years with the company. The former New Day members opted to leave WWE and went on to sign with All Elite Wrestling.

Creed and Kofi debuted for AEW as The New Level alongside Swerve Strickland at All In 2026, and they captured the World Trios Championship.

While speaking to Fightful, Creed looked back on the period of time between his and Kofi’s WWE exits and their arrival to AEW. He said it was amazing because he had been burnt out and it felt good to be home.

“It was great. It was amazing. I’ve never been home for the summer. I’ve been wrestling 23 years and I’ve been wrestling 23 summers.” He continued, “For me, this was the first time that I got to be home for the summer with my kids. So I got to actually be there and be dad, which was really cool, and so, it also helped me to figure out how to build a foundation to have a better work/life balance than I had previously. I was very burnt out. Very burnt out. Wrestling constantly, doing the YouTube channel constantly. Doing appearances constantly everywhere which is important to me because I wanna be able to hustle; I wanna be able to build what I can while I can, because once my body doesn’t wanna do it anymore, I don’t wanna feel like I have to keep doing it. So there’s sacrifice. But, being able to have that summer really allowed me to figure out what I want my life to look like and what I will say yes to, what I will say no to, what I’m comfortable doing, what I’m not comfortable doing, what I will get out of bed for and leave my house for, and what I will not, and so having that mindset now has really given me a new center, and that feels really good to be able to have that balance.”

Creed, Kofi, and Strickland had four successful defenses of the AEW World Trios Titles.