Austin Creed Recalls Having To Ignore Big E On Red Carpet And How His Son Reacted, New Level Speak On Relationship With Big E

The New Day (Kofi Kingston, Xavier Woods, and Big E) celebrated their ten year anniversary as a group in WWE in December 2024 by kicking Big E out of the group and going down a new path.

Big E hadn’t been able to wrestle for years due to a neck injury.

The heel New Day run got off to a strong start, but began to fizzle as tag teams became less of a focus on WWE Raw. Kofi & Woods (Austin Creed) would leave WWE in May, but Big E continues to work for the promotion.

Speaking to Ariel Helwani on the Ariel Helwani Show, Creed reflected on the turn.

“It felt like we had a really cool opportunity to tell that story with E. Being able to be in that segment was incredible, and the thing I really enjoyed about it is that they gave us time to do it and bring it to the screen, which I thought was received really well. After the segment, we’re walking to the back, and there are people who have old New Day shirts on. The girl has tears in her eyes as she’s looking me. I stopped, and we’re staring at each other. Just tears. I’m like, ‘This is wrestling. This level of emotion.’ I thought that was awesome. We got to do some really cool stuff right after that, being able to turn, changing the look. The show just shifted. A little less tag team stuff. We don’t have a ton of big tag team stories on the show. We’re not as involved as we wanted to be,” he said.

Creed also recalled a story of having to ignore Big E at a red carpet event, and how not breaking kayfabe in public affected his son and influenced his decision to leave the promotion when he was asked to take a pay cut.

“I’m changing my three-year-old, and he’s asking me about wrestling. He was like, ‘Does Kofi like to get hit hard? E?’ ‘E is not wrestling.’ He’s like, ‘Why didn’t E talk to us? We talked to Kofi. We talked to E, but he didn’t talk to us.’ He was remembering at Mania because (we were mad at E), we walked past E on the red carpet, and I pulled my family along. He’s three. I said, ‘I cannot do that. We cannot do that. We have to go,'” he said.

Creed later clarified that he wouldn’t be kayfabing his family anymore because Big E is his brother and he wants to teach his son that you don’t ignore your brothers.

Asked about the relationship with Big E, particularly the vignette of them as unicorns breaking free from the circus, and giving a nod to a still trapped unicorn with a broken horn, Kofi said, “It’s been this slow diversion; we talk every single day, but we were a trio for so long and spent so much time together. E got put on a different show, he gets hurt, we’re active wrestlers and he’s commentary. We’re seeing each other less and we get this call, and E is still there. It’s been this slow diversion and the universe putting us on different trajectories. We’ve been on different trajectories for a very long time, and this is the official, ‘We’re going to be over here. You’re doing your thing over here. We’re always going to be together.’ We’ve had that conversation in real life, and it’s okay; we all want the best for each other. Him giving us his approval, we would do the same thing for him. We want him to have the most success.”

New Level debuted in AEW at AEW All In, winning the Trios Titles with Swerve Strickland.

Fans can see how Big E felt about their debut by clicking here.

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