The New Level on Their WWE Releases and “Phones Were Ringing Pretty Quick” With Others Beyond Wrestling, Swerve Strickland Being A Good Fit For Their Trios Team, & Creed Reveals AEW Flew His Family Out For AEW Debut at All In 2026

A recent episode of the AEW Close Up with Renee Paquette show featured The New Level’s Kofi and Austin Creed as the guests. One of the topics discussed included Creed’s thoughts about their mindset during the 90 days following their release from WWE and how they had offers for non-wrestling ventures.

“That was like it was a quick thought, but I feel like we do so much outside of wrestling that as quick as the thought came, it left because I’ve always had the mentality of, you know, we do a lot of stuff in the gaming space. We do a lot of stuff and just in just other aspects. So, not wrestling just meant now we have more time for these things. And not to sound pompous or anything, but our phones were ringing pretty quick and our schedule got filled pretty quick. Not even with wrestling stuff, just with anime conventions.

We weren’t necessarily worried about, ‘Oh, how are we going to make a living?’ Like we’re very lucky to be prominent in those spaces already. So it just gave us more time for that. And so that 90 days was awesome with the kids, awesome with the family. And then every once in a while, we’d go out and do a signing somewhere, do some conventions. We learned a ton about trading cards and all that stuff. And so there were avenues for us to not only make money but still have a ton of time at home with the kids. So that 90 days it was just really nice to only do what we wanted to do to be our own bosses.” 

Kofi and Creed also gave their thoughts about working with Swerve Strickland and how Strickland is a good fit for their Trios team in AEW.

Austin Creed – “I feel like it’s because we are how we are and just happy and not happy go lucky but we’re just really hyper positive down and Swerve is ready to commit crime.”

Kofi – “We all know how talented he is. I was telling him this too, like his come up has been just, we all know how talented he is, and I think his come up has been just magnificent. We saw him in a role where he wasn’t being given an opportunity to shine, and knowing how talented he was, and then to see him come to AEW and rise to the top and have the high caliber matches that he’s had, being able to develop his character, being able to cut these promos, being able to burn people’s houses down. To really understand why he was so frustrated… he’s so passionate. You put all of that passion into one caldron, then you’re about to get some real good soup.”

Creed – “And it’s also nice because we automatically get the chance to interact with somebody on the show who has a very strong personality. It would be fantastic to come out and it’s us and we’re here and now you get to see through matches and things, us interacting with personalities, but you not only get that, you now also get us interacting with Swerve, who’s a personality that you’re comfortable with, you already know. So now that just adds another layer to things. It’s about the stories. The interaction between as many characters on the show as possible because you don’t know if it’s going to be oil and water. You don’t know if it’s going to mix well. You don’t know if it’s going to explode. Like what’s what’s going to happen? And that to us it’s so exciting.”

Creed also gave his thoughts about how AEW flew out his family to London so that they could watch in-person his and Kofi’s debut for the company at All In 2026.

“So we came to the arena Saturday to sign the contract and meet Tony and hang out. But it was really cool. Also I had come in with my family which was crazy awesome that AEW flew them out here with me. And that’s something that has never happened before. We bounced around some and then eventually I just got in an Uber and then came down there. But that’s why we weren’t together.

We finally saw each other at the building and it was like, ‘Oh, we’re we’re here. We’re doing it.’”

Kofi also gave his thoughts about the backstage excitement meeting and seeing AEW talents with some who they knew before and some familiar faces from AEW TV.

“But even like driving to the building and seeing all the flyers and everything and seeing, you know, ‘There’s Mercedes, oh, there’s Swerve, there’s Jet.’ It felt like such a weird out of body experience. familiar but way different. And then there’s so many people who I felt like I’ve known because I’ve watched them on TV but I actually haven’t. So, and I think that happens a lot, right, with fans and wrestlers or fans and superstars. People feel like they know us. They’ve watched us but they never (met).”

Transcript h/t: F4WOnline.com 1, 2, & 3