Smark Out Moment

When Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods left WWE earlier this year, the immediate speculation was obvious. Where would they wrestle next? Would they remain together? Which tag teams would be waiting for them? How long would it take before someone found a way to finally give wrestling fans a proper version of The New Day against The Young Bucks?

Those questions are still worth asking. Fightful Select has reported that Austin Creed and Kofi are expected to join AEW soon, although sources stopped short of confirming that contracts had actually been signed. Until they walk through the curtain on Dynamite, Collision or an AEW pay-per-view, that distinction needs to remain in place.

Still, AEW is clearly the destination everyone is looking toward, and it isn't difficult to imagine how the two former New Day members could fit into the current AEW roster. There are obvious matches with FTR, The Young Bucks and any number of other teams. There are years of history with Kenny Omega and the Bucks that could be mined for television. Kofi is a former WWE champion. Creed is a former King of the Ring winner. Together, they are one of the most accomplished tag teams of their generation.

But if Austin Creed does sign with All Elite Wrestling, Tony Khan might be getting something else that could be useful beyond another name on a match card.

He would be getting one of professional wrestling's most established connections to video game culture at precisely the time when AEW should probably start figuring out what it wants its own future in gaming to look like.

Xavier Woods Built a Second Career Around Video Games

Calling Creed a wrestler who happens to like video games undersells what he has built over the past decade.

UpUpDownDown launched in 2015 and grew into something significantly bigger than watching wrestlers kill time with controllers backstage. As Tubefilter covered when the channel first launched, the idea was to combine WWE personalities with the enormous gaming audience on YouTube, with Creed at the center of the project. It eventually grew beyond two million subscribers and became an avenue for WWE talent to display personalities that often had little to do with whatever characters they were playing on Raw and SmackDown.

That was always part of the appeal. Someone might only get a few minutes of television time on WWE programming, but a gaming video could give fans an entirely different reason to become attached to that performer. Friendships, rivalries, jokes and personality quirks could develop naturally without having to be filtered through a wrestling storyline.

Creed's gaming profile also extended beyond WWE's own ecosystem. When G4 was preparing its revival, he campaigned to become part of the network and ultimately became its first announced talent. Variety spoke with Creed about joining G4 in 2020, and he later became involved in a WWE-G4 video game competition series as well.

That's why I wouldn't look at a possible AEW signing and think the only value is sticking Creed and Kofi in the tag team division. If you're hiring someone who has spent years building credibility in gaming, streaming and internet content, why wouldn't you at least pick his brain about a part of your company that has already cost millions of dollars to establish?

Especially when Creed already has a history with some of the people most associated with AEW's gaming side.

Austin Creed, Kenny Omega and The Elite Already Have Gaming History

Long before AEW existed, Xavier Woods and Kenny Omega had their own cross-promotional rivalry through video games. That eventually expanded into The New Day facing Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks in Street Fighter V at E3 2018.

Think about how bizarre that was in context. WWE performers and top stars from another wrestling ecosystem were publicly interacting while representing their respective sides, but they weren't doing it inside a wrestling ring. Gaming provided neutral territory.

Years later, Kenny Omega would become one of the central figures behind AEW's first major console game.

That connection alone doesn't mean Creed should be handed the keys to AEW Games. Being knowledgeable about games does not make someone a game developer, programmer, animator or expert on project management. One of the easiest mistakes wrestling companies can make is assuming being passionate about something is the same as being qualified to execute every part of it.

But there is a huge amount of territory between "make Austin Creed the lead developer" and "ignore everything he knows about the audience."

Creed knows how wrestling fans respond to gaming content. He knows how wrestlers can be incorporated into that content without everything feeling like a corporate advertisement. He understands conventions, streamers, gaming personalities and the value of having wrestlers interact with people who aren't otherwise part of the wrestling bubble.

AEW already has people such as Kenny Omega who understand that overlap. Creed would give the company another person with years of experience actually turning it into content.

AEW Wanted Video Games to Be Part of Its Identity

Gaming wasn't some random licensing idea AEW stumbled into several years after launching. The company talked about making a major wrestling game very early in its existence.

AEW eventually partnered with Yuke's, the developer behind a long list of WWE games, with THQ Nordic publishing what became AEW: Fight Forever. The mission was clear: Don't just make a lower-budget imitation of WWE 2K. Build something that feels more like the accessible wrestling games of the Nintendo 64 era, particularly WWF No Mercy.

That was the right idea.

It may have actually been the best decision associated with the entire project.

THQ Nordic openly promoted Fight Forever around its nostalgic arcade-wrestling approach, and several reviews agreed that the core gameplay had merit. Polygon compared its design favorably to the golden era of wrestling games, while other outlets similarly praised how quickly players could pick it up and start throwing opponents through tables.

The problem wasn't that Fight Forever refused to become WWE 2K.

The problem was that AEW built a game designed around replayable arcade wrestling without providing enough reasons to keep replaying it.

Fight Forever Needed More Than a Good Foundation

If you strip everything else away, Fight Forever can be fun. Matches move quickly. The controls are easier to understand than the increasingly complicated systems in some simulation-heavy wrestling titles. The weapons are ridiculous. The Exploding Barbed Wire Deathmatch gives the game something that the WWE series can't offer in quite the same way.

But a wrestling game in the 2020s needs to be more than fun for a night when a few friends come over.

Game Informer's review called out the shallow overall package, including the limited creation options and lack of depth beyond the core wrestling. GameSpot similarly landed on the idea of Fight Forever being a midcard debut rather than the main event AEW needed.

Those shortcomings become even more glaring with time.

A wrestling game has a built-in problem that most other games don't. The real-world product constantly changes. New wrestlers sign. Others leave. Championship designs change. Tag teams break up. Someone turns heel. Someone gets new entrance music. Someone who wasn't important enough to make the launch roster becomes world champion a year later.

If your game isn't capable of evolving alongside the television product, it begins feeling outdated almost immediately.

That's where creation tools and online sharing become so important. Wrestling fans have historically filled gaps themselves. Give them enough tools and they will create missing wrestlers, arenas, championships, alternate attires and entire promotions. The more freedom players have, the less dependent the developer is on keeping every single detail perfectly updated.

Fight Forever didn't give its players enough of that freedom.

Road to Elite had some entertaining ideas, but it wasn't expansive enough to carry the game for years. The creation suite wasn't deep enough to compensate for roster omissions. There wasn't an enormous Universe-style sandbox. The game added downloadable wrestlers and new features after launch, including the 30-player Stadium Stampede mode, but the additions never fundamentally transformed Fight Forever into the long-term platform it probably needed to become.

Even when Smark Out Moment looked back on AEW's best and worst of 2023, Fight Forever was part of the broader conversation surrounding what worked and what didn't during that year for the company.

A sequel should learn from all of that rather than simply adding more wrestlers and putting a "2" on the box.

AEW Shouldn't Try to Beat WWE 2K at Being WWE 2K

The biggest mistake AEW could make with another console game would be trying to win a content arms race with WWE.

WWE 2K has too much of a head start.

The current WWE series has had years to rebuild after the WWE 2K20 disaster, expand its modes and refine its systems. WWE 2K26 now advertises hundreds of wrestlers and legends, MyGM, MyRISE, Universe, MyFACTION and an enormous creation ecosystem. Its creation suite alone now supports 200 Create-a-Superstar slots along with expanded image capacity and deeper morphing tools, according to 2K's breakdown of the WWE 2K26 creation features.

AEW isn't realistically going to out-WWE WWE on its second attempt.

It doesn't need to.

Fight Forever was correct to establish a different identity. The follow-up just needs to take that concept much further.

Make the wrestling faster and more accessible. Give players full entrances and better presentation without turning every match into a slow simulation. Expand the creation suite dramatically. Allow community sharing. Make cross-platform play a priority. Update the roster regularly. Give players a proper long-term career or booking mode. Add more distinctly AEW match types. Build online rankings and tournaments that give people reasons to continue playing after they finish whatever single-player content is available.

And maybe most importantly, stop thinking about a wrestling video game as something that is finished when it ships.

If AEW makes another game, the goal should be building a community around it.

Could a Wrestling Game Actually Work as an Esport?

This is where professional wrestling creates an unusual contradiction.

The results of wrestling matches are predetermined. The winner of Jon Moxley vs Kenny Omega isn't decided by which man performs better that night. AEW has writers, producers and Tony Khan deciding where stories need to go.

Put Moxley and Omega into a video game and hand controllers to two players, however, and suddenly the competition is real.

There is no fundamental reason a wrestling game couldn't develop a legitimate competitive scene. The bigger problem is that most wrestling games aren't designed around that goal.

Character ratings can create imbalance. Certain moves inevitably become easier to exploit than others. Created wrestlers can obliterate any concept of competitive fairness if players are allowed to maximize every statistic. Reversal systems can become repetitive. A player who wants to recreate WrestleMania has different priorities from someone who wants to climb a global leaderboard.

Those aren't impossible problems to solve.

Ranked play could standardize attributes while leaving normal exhibition matches untouched. Created characters could be restricted or normalized. Developers could rebalance moves for competitive modes without changing how they function everywhere else. Seasonal ladders could rotate rules and match types. Official tournaments could be streamed through AEW's channels with wrestlers appearing as commentators, coaches or personalities surrounding the competition.

It doesn't need to become the next League of Legends, Street Fighter or Counter-Strike. That's an absurd standard to set.

Even a comparatively small competitive wrestling-game community would give AEW possibilities that Fight Forever never fully tapped into. Livestreams, rankings, sponsored competitions, personalities, tournament brackets, championship events, eSports odds and all the surrounding conversation can turn a multiplayer game into an ongoing community rather than something that disappears from everyone's hard drive three months after launch.

Wrestling might actually be particularly well suited to making that presentation entertaining.

You already have professional talkers on the roster. You already have commentators. You already have performers who understand how to create rivalries and make audiences care about personalities. A tournament between anonymous usernames isn't particularly compelling to a wrestling fan. Put those players into teams coached by AEW wrestlers, let those wrestlers talk trash for them and build toward a tournament final at Starrcast, a gaming convention or an AEW pay-per-view weekend, and suddenly you have something much easier to promote.

Which brings us right back to Austin Creed.

Austin Creed Could Be More Useful Behind a Controller Than AEW Realizes

If Creed joins AEW, nobody should expect him to walk into Tony Khan's office with the design document for Fight Forever 2 under his arm.

That isn't the point.

His value would be understanding how to connect the pieces AEW already has.

Kenny Omega understands gaming. The Young Bucks have already participated in crossover gaming events. AEW has a roster filled with wrestlers who stream, play games and interact with gaming culture. The company has an existing game engine that it reportedly owns. It has the remnants of the AEW Games branding. It has years of feedback from Fight Forever showing what wrestling fans liked and what they thought was missing.

What AEW doesn't appear to have right now is a clear gaming strategy.

In 2025, Tony Khan acknowledged that gaming remains important to AEW fans while also making it clear that wrestling, television and pay-per-view were the company's core priorities. He suggested that AEW could eventually return to games on different platforms without laying out a specific next project, as Cageside Seats covered from Khan's comments.

That uncertainty still exists. In May 2026, Sean Ross Sapp said he had not heard about a new AEW video game being developed, while also noting AEW owns the engine created for Fight Forever, according to 411Mania's coverage of the Fightful report.

Maybe that's actually an opportunity.

AEW doesn't need to announce a $40 million video game the morning Creed signs his contract. Start smaller.

Let Creed host an AEW gaming show. Organize tournaments between wrestlers. Bring in gaming creators. Revisit some of the chemistry he already has with Omega. Experiment with competitive Fight Forever events. Partner with existing game publishers when AEW wrestlers appear as crossover characters. Increase AEW's visibility at conventions. Find out what the audience actually responds to.

If those experiments work, then use what you've learned when deciding what the next AEW wrestling game should actually be.

That's a much smarter approach than deciding "we need Fight Forever 2," spending years and millions of dollars developing it and hoping the audience will still be waiting at the finish line.

AEW's Next Gaming Move Should Be About Building Something That Lasts

Fight Forever doesn't need to be remembered as proof that AEW shouldn't make video games.

It should be remembered as the first attempt.

The core gameplay had enough going for it that throwing the entire concept in the garbage would be unnecessary. The bigger lesson is that an arcade wrestling game needs depth just as much as a simulation does. That depth simply doesn't have to come from the same places.

WWE 2K can have the enormous simulation package.

AEW can focus on speed, accessibility, ridiculous match types, online competition, constant updates and community interaction. Let people create. Let them share. Let them compete. Give them reasons to come back. Build something with a distinct identity instead of selling nostalgia for WWF No Mercy and assuming nostalgia itself will provide longevity.

And if Austin Creed and Kofi do eventually show up in AEW, the obvious wrestling possibilities will receive most of the attention. That's understandable. The matches are why they would be there in the first place.

But one of the smartest things AEW could do would be recognizing that signing a talent sometimes means acquiring more than another wrestler for Dynamite.

Austin Creed spent more than a decade building a recognizable identity at the intersection of professional wrestling and video games. AEW has already spent years trying to establish itself in that exact same space.

If those two paths are about to cross, AEW should see where they can go next.

WOULD YOU WANT TO SEE AUSTIN CREED INVOLVED WITH AEW GAMES? WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE ABOUT A POTENTIAL FIGHT FOREVER SEQUEL?

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