A new day, and new allegations about the WWE from The New Day.
Bad puns aside, it seems that the New Day’s saga with WWE is far from over. In May this year The New Day parted ways with the promotion they have served for almost 20 years after the expiry of their contracts. It was speculated at the time that TKO had offered the multi-time record-breaking tag team duo of Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston a deal that would see them take a 50% pay cut.
The legendary figures took the call to not accept it and walked off, riding off into the sunset and choosing to determine their paths elsewhere. Fast forward about four months and The New Day are now The New Level, and they recently debuted at AEW All In to become the Trios Champions alongside Swerve Strickland.
Indeed, it was an open secret by the point their music hit Wembley Stadium on August 30, but there still some hidden secrets we need to talk about.
WWE Did The New Day Dirty
It seems that the pay cut we talked in the first half of the article, was grossly misunderstood. While manuy reports suggested that it was a 50% pay cut, Kofi and Austin Creed have now revealed that it was actually more than 50%. Speaking on The Ariel Helwani show, the stars made some shocking allegations.
“I don’t know what’s out there, but it was more than 50%. For sure. A lot of people don’t know. It was more.”
It is baffling that life-long servants of the company had to endure something as shameful as getting their pays cut by more than 50%. We all know at this point that TKO relies on metrics and social media engagements and clicks, and what not to determine the value of a particular star, or stars. This was one of the reason Sheamus was also let go. But you have to understand that there’s a difference between a star who has been in the company for two or three years as compared to someone, like The New Day, who have been there for a whole lot more.
Two decades is enough for any company to turn around and say that you have done, and we are here to pay you your dues. Instead, WWE behaved like ungrateful brats and asked, perhaps their biggest and best tag team of all time, to take pay cuts and essentially leave them with nothing.
The numbers here are also interesting, because at one point The New Day was exceptionally popular and clearly had the fans enticed, especially when they turned heel on Big E. However, it was bad booking and complete mismanagement of their talents that led to them falling out of favor.
Kofi and Xavier did not ask to be paired with Grayson Waller in some non-sense feud. Hell, a glorious heel turn was ruined because of it.
The entire situation is just baffling and WWE needs to be very sorry about letting two absolute legends leave without a proper farewell.
