Matt Jackson called Triple H in 2018 to pitch a New Day vs. The Elite dream match. The revelation, dropped on the latest episode of Being The Elite, re-contextualizes years of social media teasing into something that was nearly real, and lands at the exact moment Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods are weeks away from being able to sign with All Elite Wrestling.
“We truly were trying to get a New Day, Young Bucks, Kenny match to happen. An Elite vs. New Day match actively,” Matt Jackson said on the show. “They said they were trying on their side. We were definitely talking to our bosses.”
Jackson then disclosed the call itself.
“Even to the point in 2018 when we got on the phone with Triple H and we talked to him and said, ‘Hey, we would really like to do this match.’ I don’t know if he was necessarily interested in just doing that match. I think he was more interested in pursuing us to work for him, but we talked to him about it. We were serious about doing the match and we thought we’d probably be able to do it, and unfortunately we never did.”
The Episode Doubles As A Tease
The episode itself is a watchalong of Being The Elite episode 107, the 2018 “It’s a New Day” installment that documented The Elite facing off against The New Day in Street Fighter V at E3. Kenny Omega complemented the timing by posting throwback video footage of himself gaming with The New Day from that same event, making the back-to-back teases impossible to read as coincidence.
The footage and the 2018 phone call paint the same picture. The Elite have wanted this match for nearly a decade, and they are surfacing the evidence at the precise moment it might finally happen.
Why Now
Kingston and Woods mutually parted ways with WWE on May 2. Dave Meltzer reported in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that TKO offered the duo reduced deals just one year into a five-year contract set to run through 2030, and both men declined and walked, per the backstage update from Meltzer’s reporting.
Standard WWE deals include a 90-day non-compete clause. If Kingston and Woods are operating under that timeline, they would be eligible to sign with another promotion at the end of July, opening a runway to a potential AEW debut during the summer build to All In London.
The Young Bucks and FTR were among the first to tweet teases in the immediate aftermath of the news, per Meltzer. MJF and Cash Wheeler invoked The New Day’s signature catchphrase in their own posts. Swerve Strickland told TMZ’s Inside the Ring podcast that he texted Kingston after the release and considers him “one of the top five greatest ever to do it.” The New Day name remains WWE property, so any AEW arrival would likely see Kingston and Woods working under their individual names.