Jim Ross thinks the only real obstacle to the New Day landing in AEW is whether the company has a proper slot for a tag team rather than for two singles wrestlers.
Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods, now working as Kofi and Austin Creed, left WWE on May 2 after declining restructured contracts with significant pay cuts, ending runs of twenty and sixteen years respectively. Their 90-day non-competes expired at the start of August. Nothing has been announced.
Asked on Grilling JR whether he expects them in AEW, Ross went at it from the roster side.
“Well, you got to make sure you got a spot on your roster for a team. It’s different than signing a single, so you got to have space. You got to have a place. They got to have their quote-unquote spot. So as a team, not as two singles.”
“For them to be as effective as they could be, they need to come in as a team, but I don’t know that that’s feasible. It all depends on who’s here, who’s hot, who’s doing what they’re doing. And I know Tony Khan has got a sharp eye, and they have great charisma, those two guys or three guys, so it’d be interesting to see.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know the answer. That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer to it, but the sticker might be you got to have a high-level spot on your roster for a team, not two singles.”
Asked separately whether he ever signed tag teams as teams rather than as two prospects, Ross was blunt about how WWE approached it during his years running talent relations.
“Yeah, I think what people need to remember is that most of the time, when we were hiring tag teams, we had spots on the card for tag teams. There’s no doubt about that. But the real mission in signing a tag team is that you hope you discovered one, at least one, and maybe two great singles out of it, because that’s where your money was. Tag teams didn’t sell as many tickets, to my experience, as did singles.”
“We hired tag teams to find singles, and we knew that teams like the Hardys were less likely to break up. I didn’t think that was going to happen with the Dudleys, but it did. And both of them had good singles careers, especially Bubba, who’s just a natural heel, and he’s smart.”
“Edge and Christian, that was an obvious they’re going to be singles sooner than later situation. Even though they were a great team and they drew money and did great on the pay-per-view circuit, I thought that they stayed together about as long as I thought they would. They just had too much potential as singles, and that’s what we were looking for.”
Kofi and Creed posted an animated short on July 29 called Daybreak, made by Jonathan Davenport, in which two unicorns escape a circus and leave their horns behind. It was widely read as marking the end of the New Day name. Big E, the third member, has not wrestled since a neck injury.
The Motor City Machine Guns, released in the same period, signed with AEW and debuted on Collision in Detroit on July 30. AEW runs All In at Wembley Stadium on August 30.
