Kevin Kelly Shares His Thoughts On AEW Release

Kevin Kelly’s tenure with All Elite Wrestling came to an end in March 2024, with the former WWE, NJPW, and Ring of Honor commentator released from his contract after erratic behaviour on social media.

Kelly was brought into AEW to serve as lead announcer on Collision in 2023, but his performances were deemed sub-par by those within the organisation, whilst public support of QAnon linked videos, and publicly accusing former ROH colleague Ian Riccaboni of ‘libelling’ him.

The veteran announcer recently took part in a virtual signing with K & S Wrestlefest, detailing the events that led to his release, as well as his spat with Ricabonni, and his links with QAnon:

“Sure felt like it (Ian Riccaboni was plotting against me) … Yeah (Riccaboni took over from me in ROH), because I got him a job. We were friends. 

“It still makes no sense. Ian Riccaboni, I first met him at the Monster Factory. Bob Evans said to me, ‘Brutal’ Bob Evans, who had been doing a lot of training with the Monster Factory crew, said, ‘You need to meet Ian because he’s really good and he’s special and he should get a look for Ring of Honor’ so I went there, did a seminar, met him and was like, ‘Oh my gosh, yes. Let’s see how you do. Come on with me. We’ll start having you come local,’ so anything in the northeast and he made some long drives and did it the right way and it was like, okay, he called the dark matches. He could do Women of Honor, so it would be unique, different branding, and we got along great and we worked together on some shows. Everything was fine. When Joey Mercury left, I found out that Ian was kind of, as Dennis Coralluzzo used to say, ‘Putting the mouth on me,’ Ian was, in the office. Yeah, after I was gone. Because I went to New Japan. I was like, ‘Eh, alright,’ and I talked to some people about it and I was like, ‘Ah, I’m not gonna worry about it.’ Yeah, whatever. But then, I start doing this AEW thing and Tony Khan told me, ‘I first wanted Ian Riccaboni to do Collision but, he couldn’t because of his day job.’ Okay. So, Ian recommended me. Great, cool. I go away — they knew this. I go away to do the G1, I’m gone five weeks, I come back and it’s like, Ian’s hammered me on Discord on this New Japan message board about, you know, I did all these different things to him, over the years, which I never knew. I had no clue, and then, to top it all off, he accuses me of being some QAnon conspiracy theorist for supporting a movie that was against child trafficking. That’s neither here nor there.

“The part that bothers me so much is that I thought we were friends and if he would have called me, we could have talked about it. ‘Hey Kevin, listen, you’re really p****** me off’, and even if we would have agreed to never be friends before, if he would have just called me up and said, ‘F you, I hate you, I never wanna see you again’, at least I would know where I stood and then I could work towards fixing what I had done wrong. But instead, the way that he went about it painted me with a nasty brush and it was done on purpose so that the fans would turn against me because he did it in a New Japan Discord board, and people were messaging me that I’m friends with because I’d go there all the time. That’s how I found out about it. Jet lag, post-G1. I wake up, I was like, ‘Oh, let’s see what they’re saying about us. Hey, wait a minute. What the hell?’ And people that I’m friendly with in there were like, ‘What is Ian doing? Why is he doing this?’ ‘I have no idea’ so I message him and it’s like, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ ‘Well, you said and did a bunch of different things to me over the years and I’m p***** off about it.’ ‘Okay, but, well let’s talk about it.’ ‘Well, I’ll only talk to you if you guarantee that you’re not gonna record the call.’ I’m like, ‘I wouldn’t know how to record a call off a cellphone. What are you? Crazy? Yeah, sure. We need to talk about this, we need to talk about this’ and we never did and then, things started to change within AEW, and it was almost like hand in glove.

“It was never a good fit, me being there. I came from New Japan, where I was left alone and I knew what I was doing and I was calling matches that were just like AEW and all of a sudden now, I’ve got all these people in my ear and I’ve got all this format stuff and it’s like, ‘Why do we have to do things the same way Dynamite is?’ Is what I said. ‘Why do we have to be the same show? Don’t we want Collision to be different? Isn’t this a different thing?’ Whether it was split because of CM Punk and The (Young) Bucks, I have no idea. That was never even brought up. But it was a separate show, Saturday night, great. Let’s make it different, let’s do some different things. 

“Why can’t we as announcers be different? Because I’m different than Taz and Excalibur and (Tony) Schiavone and just the handwriting was on the wall and it wasn’t gonna work and I was getting more and more p***** off and I talked to the AEW office about it. I talked to them and I told them that I was mentally getting really in a bad spot over this too, and I vented and when I vented, that’s when they let me go… Again, no harm, no foul with AEW — no. Big blame. Big blame there but I always wanted to straighten things out with Ian and I feel terrible that he was mad at me over something he never told me and it led to a bunch of different problems. One incident in particular, he did spell it out for me and I did say it to him. I meant it in like a — I won’t go into it but, I didn’t get the chance to explain it but I understand how it could be taken the wrong way and oh, the other thing that he said was that I knocked him for wearing a hat on Collision, which I did, a cowboy hat, because he’s sitting right next to Jim Ross. Because they’re in Calgary in Stampede and I was like, saying it because guess what? You’re gonna get heat with J.R. if you’re wearing a cowboy hat sitting next to him at the announce desk. Whether he says it’s okay or not, that doesn’t matter… And it was born in Calgary, it was born at the Stampede and he’s the one who wears the f****** cowboy hat. Why would you do that? Whatever. Listen, Ian got upset about that. Give me a break,” said Kelly.

Kelly continued, noting how he felt AEW didn’t handle his feelings or his release well: 

Of course (I have ill feelings towards AEW for how things ended). I wouldn’t treat my worst enemy like that. Mike Mansury (told me I was being let go). The Executive Producer, and the new Vice President of Human Resources who I’d never met and spoke to ever before. I knocked the company on Twitter and vented on a voicemail to the H.R. lady that I had been working with. Problem was I never knew where — I brought up this whole thing with Ian (Riccaboni) and they said, ‘Yes, good. Thank you for bringing it up.’ ‘What’s going to happen?’ I said, ‘What’s the process?’ ‘Well, we’ll discuss it, we’ll let you know’ and apparently, the disciplinary got together — committee got together and made a decision. ‘Okay, what was the decision?’ ‘Well, we can’t tell you because it’s private.’ ‘Wait a minute, I was the one who was the victim here. I need to know what happened so I could put this to bed in my mind.’ ‘Well, we just can’t tell you.’ ‘Okay, this is very upsetting for me. You have to understand this?’ ‘Nah, we really don’t understand and we don’t care.’ So, whatever. They’ll get theirs. 

“My mental health was not good, from when this began and it was taking a toll on my marriage, on my family, on me personally, physically, mentally, and I mean, it’s really nobody’s business, but, my mental health was not good. It’s better now, thank God. I’ve gotten some help, I’ve gotten fixed — well, working on being fixed, as we all can be. But, for a company that cares so much about their athletes… I booked an appointment with the psychiatrist and I got all the text messages of me just ranting and raving with the poor guy, David Weinstein. I set up an appointment with him on Thursday because we were taping TV that next day and then they fired me on Wednesday. So, you guys really care about the people that you employ.

“So, yeah, it wasn’t about Ian at that point anymore. But I did kind of lump him in-in all of it. But now it’s like I’m trying to process it. So forgiving him is easy. Forgiving him, it’s already done as far as I’m concerned. But, again, you cannot do something like that. It happened to a much greater extent — I’m not comparing myself to it at all — but to Hana Kimura. Because when you bring down the force of social media onto a person, wrongly accusing someone, there are consequences. You can’t do that, you shouldn’t do that and I mean, what happened to Hana, of course was much worse than what happened to me. I’m not even comparing those but, again, it’s the same type of thing and that’s really just it. I was not a fit for AEW. I just felt like it was a very different kind of place and very stressful. So many people. There was so much chaos and it just really stressed me out a lot. So, I was much happier in New Japan, except for the flights,” said Kelly.

H/T: POST Wrestling