Austin Creed and Kofi’s WWE exit was due to being asked to take a pay cut, with reports suggesting it was 50%, though the duo has said the cut was actually higher.
Creed and Kofi were important players in WWE’s tag team division for a decade, but it seems that under TKO ownership, they weren’t as valued anymore. In an interview with “The Ariel Helwani Show” following their AEW debut at All In, Kofi said that the pay cut they were asked to take was more than 50%. He stated that money was one reason for their exit, but the other was that they didn’t feel appreciated.
“I will say it [pay cut] was more than 50%,” began Kofi. “The compensation is a big part of it, for sure. But again, the bigger part of it is being able to go out and live your dream in the way that you want to live it out and be appreciated for it, you know? We took it all into consideration, and we knew that this was the only path to take, you know, and it was scary at times, like I said, with the uncertainty and everything, but sometimes you got to do — you just got to go through.”
Kofi asserted that his motivation to leave WWE stemmed from his desire to do things on his own terms and that he trusted his ability to succeed outside of the promotion.
“You got to face the fear and you have to keep on keep on going and believe in yourself, and no matter what happens, like we feel like we did it on our own terms, right? So whether we would have made it to this point or not, at least we did it like on our own terms. That was the main thing.”
The former WWE Champion added that the opportunity to face some of the best tag teams in the business was another key factor in joining Tony Khan’s promotion.
Read the full article here
