“It’s a New Day. YES. IT. IS.”
There was something missing in wrestling as of late. I know you felt it too. It felt like a piece of joy had disappeared, like wrestling had once again gone astray. The plot was lost, the seasoning was limited, and the culture was nearly non-existent.
And as a Black wrestling fan, you’ve probably experienced this moment more times than you care to count. That sense of exclusion, not as a wrestling fan, but as a Black wrestling fan. And there’s a distinctive difference between them. However, there are moments, the ones that come few and far between, that feel like a cultural reset. A point in time that you know will be talked about for years and years to come.
And at the 2026 AEW ALL IN pay-per-view, that reset took place.
The “interruption” during your regularly scheduled programming happened.
Austin Creed, formerly known as Xavier Woods.
You could not have found a group of men more different from one another. Different backgrounds, personalities, interests and completely different journeys through professional wrestling. And although Big E, Kofi and Xavier each brought something distinctly different to the group, when together, they created a space for Blackness to exist in WWE without having to be molded into one particular archetype.
But that didn’t come easy.
When The New Day arrived, the expectation was simple: they were supposed to be heels, and we were supposed to hate them. But their personalities were too expansive. The presentation didn’t account for what these three men actually were.
The template didn’t work.
And in 2015, the tides changed. New Day turned face, but it wasn’t because the writers suddenly realized where they had gone wrong. No. It was because the fans realized what they had. See, The New Day wasn’t merely a successful Black faction in WWE. The New Day rocked. They became a cultural artifact within WWE.
Booty-Os, pancakes and a trombone became synonymous with The New Day, but what needs to be understood is that underneath that bit, there were three wrestlers claiming space to be silly, nerdy and their authentic selves on a stage that has a long, well-documented history of not knowing what to do with that.
And they didn’t just take up space. They thrived in it.
Collectively, they broke records and made history. Big E, Kofi and Xavier became the first all-Black trio to win the WWE tag team Championships, with their reign lasting 483 days, becoming the longest reign in WWE history at the time.
But individually? They were making history too.
Kofi defeated Daniel Bryan for his first WWE Championship at WrestleMania 35, creating a moment that would become popularly known as Kofimania.
Big E became the first wrestler to win the NXT Heavyweight Championship, Intercontinental Championship, and the WWE Championship under the modern brand era.
And Xavier became the inaugural King of the Ring winner to be crowned in Saudi Arabia in 2021.
But for as much history as they made together and individually, The New Day would eventually face a reality none of them could have anticipated.
Big E got hurt.
And suddenly, The New Day became two.
Kofi and Xavier continued without E, but there are some things you simply cannot recreate. The chemistry of three became the chemistry of two. The dynamic changed. The presentation changed. And over time, so did their place in WWE.
They were still former champions, and they were still two of the most recognizable tag team wrestlers of their generation. But increasingly, it felt like WWE expected them to exist in the shadow of what they had already accomplished rather than giving them a chance to create something new.
And that’s when things got complicated.
They’ve given the company some of the best years of their careers, helped change the culture of its locker room and left a resume that speaks for itself, but what do you do when you can no longer see where you fit into the future of a company?
For Kofi and Xavier, the answer seemed to be written for them.
After Big E’s retirement from in-ring competition, the two fell back into the shadow realm. The New Day continued, but their direction became gradually difficult to find. Instead of being given the time and investment to establish what a two-man New Day could become, they were left without a clear path moving forward. A storyline centered around mourning the loss of their final tag team championship reign would ultimately become the defining narrative of the remaining tag team.
The writing has been on the wall creatively. Then WWE put a price tag on their worth, reportedly asking them to accept a pay cut of more than 50 percent. After everything they have built, the records they have broken and the years they have spent helping make the company what it is, Kofi and Xavier realized that the pay cut was more than a number. It was a reflection of how WWE saw their value.
And it wasn’t enough for them to stay.
And then, just like that, The New Day was no longer WWE’s to define. The Unicorns broke free from the circus and walked out as men with their pride and a plan to shake up the industry as they once had.
Fast forward to AEW ALL IN at Wembley Stadium, Kofi and now-Austin Creed walked into a new chapter of their careers.
Not as The New Day.
As New Level.
This was a message. This wasn’t a continuation of what had already been done. Nah, this was something new. An evolution. Operating at a higher standard than ever seen before. New Level meant swimming through uncharted territories. The next echelon of their careers.
And they didn’t come to AEW simply to make an entrance.
They left Wembley as Trios Champions.
Just like that.
They saw an opportunity and they took it.
A cautionary tale for anyone who mistakes familiarity for stability.
Remember what I said earlier? There was something missing in wrestling. The joy. The seasoning. The culture. That feeling that something bigger than a match was happening in front of you.
And then New Level walked into a stadium of over 41,000 wrestling fans to ASAP Ferg’s “New Level” and reminded us what a cultural reset actually feels like. Not because they were returning to who they were. Because they are showing us who they could become if given the freedom to do so.
The New Day changed the culture once.
Now Kofi and Austin Creed get to find out what happens when they’re no longer confined to the culture they helped create. This is bigger than a new name. Bigger than a new company. Bigger than a championship.
These two men have already proven they don’t follow trends; they start them.
And if history has taught us anything, we probably shouldn’t assume we’ve seen their greatest hits.
Maybe we’ve only heard the opening track.