Kofi Kingston just revealed that the pay cut WWE wanted him and Austin Creed to take was even bigger than anyone thought. The reported number was 50%, but according to Kofi, WWE actually wanted more than half of their pay gone.
While speaking on The Ariel Helwani Show, Kofi was asked directly about reports that WWE wanted him and Creed to accept a 50% pay cut before they left the company. Kofi didn’t reveal the exact number, but he did make one thing very clear—the reports didn’t go far enough.
“I don’t know what’s out there, but yeah, I will say it was more than 50%! A lot of people don’t know it was more.”
That’s a pretty wild number considering how long Kofi and Creed had been with WWE. Previous reports claimed TKO was looking to restructure certain WWE contracts by around 50%. Bryan Alvarez reported that WWE’s justification was that talent are working significantly fewer dates now than they were when many of those bigger contracts were originally signed.
We had also reported that Kofi and Creed were among the wrestlers approached about taking reduced deals. The two ultimately decided they would rather leave WWE, even though doing so meant walking away from millions of dollars over the next four years.
Kofi isn’t pretending the money didn’t matter either. Losing more than half of your pay is obviously going to be part of that conversation, but he says their decision ultimately became about something bigger than the number on the contract.
“Even so, like I said, the compensation was 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.”
That fits with what Kofi has now revealed about the rest of their WWE negotiations. He and Creed didn’t believe the terms matched what they still brought to the table, and they wanted to actually wrestle rather than remain somewhere they felt tag team wrestling wasn’t a priority.
So the 50% figure everyone had been talking about apparently wasn’t even the whole story. Kofi won’t say exactly how much WWE wanted them to give up, but “more than 50%” explains quite a bit about why two longtime WWE stars were willing to leave millions behind and start over somewhere else.
Do you think Kofi Kingston and Austin Creed made the right decision by refusing WWE’s proposed pay cut? Let us know in the comments.
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