Kyle Fletcher Is Wrestling's Next Big Star, AEW, Will Ospreay, TNT Championship, Hangman Page
Kyle Fletcher (@kylefletcherpro) is a professional wrestler currently signed with AEW. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Houston, TX to discuss his breakout year in AEW, the match where he felt he had his breakout moment, how close he came to signing with WWE before joining AEW, his steel cage match with Will Ospreay that included a Spanish Fly off the top, why he wears pink gear, how the screwdriver became his weapon of choice, future AEW dream matches, and more!
On his breakout year:
“I think it’s one of those things where I’m doing my best to just take it as it comes and just approach every opportunity and just do the best I can with it. And then, it’s weird, because doing that, it just accumulates, and everyone starts going like, ‘Oh my God, look at this run you’re having.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, thanks, man.’ I’m just thinking about next week, thinking about the next match type thing. So it’s cool to look back on, but yeah, I try my best to just look forward and to live in the present and just focus on what I’m doing right now.”
On the head shaving segment:
“So it started off that we knew we were going to do this Ospreay feud, and that was what we were leaning towards. It was just one of those things where I was getting sick of my hair, my blonde hair, and I was wanting to change it anyway. So I just broached the idea. I can’t remember who I said it to originally, it might have been in the room with Tony. I was like, ‘Hey, I want to get rid of my hair. Is there some way we could use it in this storyline?’ The way we landed on was me shaving it myself. It felt like a definitive change, a definitive moment to me, I was literally shedding the skin of being in Ospreay’s shadow, I was trying to get out of that. So yeah, it started with me, but then it was, oh yeah, that’s a pretty good idea, let’s run with it. So yeah, it was cool the way it came off in the end.”
Were you nervous?
“Oh, totally. I also hadn’t had a buzzed head since I was five or six years old, or something like that. So I’d never seen the shape of my head as an adult. So I’m like, man, what if I go on TV and I have weirdly shaped lumps or something like that? I don’t know. So yeah, it was pretty nerve-wracking.”
On his promo inspirations:
“This always gets a bit of a laugh. Growing up, I’m a little bit younger than a lot of wrestling fans. One of the people who first drew me with their promos was The Miz. A lot of people have things to say about him now, but I still think he’s one of the best. I think I’ve always thought that. That’s always how it happens as well. It’s like, when they’re on the way out, it’s like, oh yeah, you know what? He’s pretty good. But I was 12 years old in 2011 going, This is the best. ‘I’m awesome!’ So, yeah, that was probably my first one. I think Cena is far and away the best promo guy I’ve ever seen. The stuff in his final run, there have been a couple where I’ve just been sitting there glued to the screen like how is this guy just so amazing at what he does? Roman, obviously, now. Then there’s Hangman, I think is one of the best guys on the mic. Joe, every time he’s on the mic, I’m so drawn into him. MJF, as well. Those are kind of probably where I draw the most inspiration from. I’d say those guys.”
On previous comparisons to Will Ospreay:
“It’s one of those things where for a hot second you take it as a compliment, and it’s like, at surface level it’s like, Oh, thanks. I think Will’s incredible at what he does. So I take that as a compliment. But then I feel like, the more I sit with it, and the more I hear it, the more it makes me go, No, I don’t want to be anyone else. I don’t want to be the second coming of Will Ospreay. I think after shaving the head, I got a lot of Randy Orton [comparisons], and it’s like the same feeling of at first, that’s really cool, that’s a great comparison. But I really want to start carving my own path, and I don’t want to be the second anybody else. So, yeah, I think that’s kind of what I’m focusing on, and just trying to carve my own path.”
On wearing pink gear:
“Yeah, so that kind of started earlier this year. I think it was a random tweet that jogged my memory. It was like not enough men wear pink in wrestling. I screenshotted it, and I sent it to my gear designer, the guy that designs all my gear. I was like, I have this idea, I’d done a triple red gear before, but in my brain, it just like popped. I was like, triple pink, just for whatever reason, that was my idea. Then I just sent that to him, and then we were like, All right, great. He cooked this thing up, I saw the design, and I was like, this is the best gear I have ever had. I’m so excited. Then it ended up coming in time, just as I found out I was going to be in the Owen tournament. So I was like, Oh, that makes sense. I’ll just wear it for the Owen tournament. That’s great. It’s perfect. So I wore it for that. It was Dynasty earlier this year. I wore that gear for the first time, and just the reaction that it got was polarizing. It was like, people loved it, people hated it, whatever it was. But I think whenever something like that happens, it sets something off in my brain. That’s something, whatever that is, something that organically gets that much reaction either way, it’s like, that’s something to tap into. So I was like all right, I’m gonna keep wearing this gear for a little bit, see what happens. I think I wore that one set of gear for a month or two, and by that point, everyone was like, pink is your thing now. I think it’s just synonymous with you. So I was like, Okay. And then since then, it’s just been every set of gear I’ve had. It’s like, all right, what can we do with pink this time? Let’s change it up. Let’s do something else. And then, yeah, the suits and stuff as well. I think I’ve just found my thing, my found my niche.”
On whether he feels the pressure of being told he is a future star:
“In a lot of ways, yes, but I think none of it even comes close to the pressure that I put on myself. I think my whole life, I’ve kind of felt this. Even before I knew I wanted to be a wrestler. I felt this calling that I was meant to do something big, that I was meant to be somebody. So when I fell into wrestling, and I was like, Yes, this is my thing, I always knew I wanted to be the best. I knew I wanted to be world champion. So I think it’s more so the pressure that I put on myself. I think when I hear other people say things like that, it’s almost more reaffirming to me that this thing that I felt, this drive, that I feel, that it is paying off, and it’s for a reason, and that I’m just exactly where I’m meant to be.”
On early memories of Australian wrestlers:
“Nathan Jones, but that was even before me. That was early 2000. So I was born in 98 so at that time I wasn’t watching wrestling. Tenille and Buddy, I think, were the first ones I saw.”
On possible WWE interest before signing with AEW:
“It was a toss-up for a while. We had one kind of like official [call]. At the time it was myself and Mark Davis as Aussie Open, we had like a Zoom call with them. We kind of spoke about what the deal would entail, and that sort of thing. I think when it got to that point, it just didn’t feel like the right fit at the time. So we didn’t get super close. It was kind of like at the point where there was options there. But AEW was just the right fit for us at the time.”
What made it the right fit?
“We were lucky enough that we’d worked there a couple of times. We got brought in as a part of New Japan to do a couple of things. And I think it was the vibe there. I think to me, it was, I don’t want to say the freedom, but I think there’s a lot of trust there to that I can produce the wrestling I want to produce, and I can wrestle the way that I love to wrestle, and I think experiencing that beforehand and knowing that, I think that was what kind of drew me towards AEW for sure.”
On his breakout match:
“I think it has to be Full Gear with Ospreay, for sure. I think maybe before that, the first match we had on Dynamite. But before that, we wrestled right after he had signed full-time, back in March of 24, we wrestled on a dynamite and that was the first time I’d been given a Dynamite main event. We got given three segments. It was my first big TV match. I think after that, a lot of people came out, and they were like, I didn’t know you could wrestle like that. Then, before that, it was in one week, I wrestled Bryan Danielson and Kenny Omega in the same week. I think that was the first one where I was like, Okay, this is weird. Then that and then to go out there, have a cool match, and then afterwards, have them be so, like, complimentary and like, putting me over and like that. That was a mind trip, for sure. But yeah, I think the first one where I kind of felt comfortable, I felt that confidence, for the first time was that full gear with Ospreay, I think was the real turning point.”
On the top cage Spanish fly:
“Well, the funny thing is, I don’t think we did entirely [know it would work]. I think it’s a lot of trust in each other. I think that was the main thing. I think we have this level of trust with each other, where it’s like, no, I literally trust you with my life, and I feel like he feels the same. So I think we both went out there and we wanted to make a moment. We wanted to make it something people would remember forever. So I think that was kind of where we landed. We were like, yeah, why not?”
On landing on the tacks:
“So the funniest part was it was mostly like my bare thighs and my quads that got the tacks. So for the next two weeks, or whatever it was, it was like just all these dots all over my quads. That was pretty funny. But, yeah, it’s funny. In those big matches, especially one like that, the adrenaline is so high that even if it hurts a little bit, it doesn’t even register in my brain. I’m thinking about camera shots and selling and my face. There’s so many things going through my brain at the time, so it didn’t even cross my mind.”
How has the screwdriver become your weapon of choice?
“Blame Don Callis for that one. Yeah, I don’t know. I’d like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at stabbing people. I like it because it’s something that a lot of people, not can relate to, they can’t relate to being stabbed with a screwdriver. But most people have held a screwdriver in their hands. I think they could pick up a screwdriver and go, he got stabbed with this. What the hell? That’s crazy. So that’s kind of why I like it.”
On his most painful moment:
“I think it was the Continental Classic match I had with Mark Briscoe. I was just climbing up the guardrail. He came and stopped me, and we did like a little baby superplex, is what we called it. Baby superplex, off the guardrail to the floor. For whatever reason, whatever angle I hit the ground, it was like all tailbone. I swear I felt like I was pissing blood. I felt like my butthole had fallen out, it was the craziest feeling I’d ever felt in my life. I was laying on the ground like, please leave me here for a good 10 seconds at least. I need to figure out if I’m okay right now.”
Did you actually piss blood?
“No, I did not. I was totally fine. But, like, whatever feeling I felt at that time, I was like, it felt like everything had exploded, and I was just not having a good time at all.”
Is there a line you won’t cross?
“Haven’t got there yet, so I’ll let you know. I think the Spanish fly was probably the one where I was like, this is getting close to the line. I was pretty we were pretty close to not doing that one.”
What made you say yes?
“I think it was that trust that we have in each other. I think if it was anybody else, he probably would have said no, but I think because it was me and we have that real-life trust in each other, he was fine. I kind of pulled his arm a little bit.”
On a future dream match:
“The one that I keep talking about is I really want to get in there with Samoa Joe. I think that would be a really cool one for me, and a really cool test for me. It’s someone that I’ve been watching for a decade plus, so that’s someone that I would love to get in there with. Other than that, I’ve been pretty blessed, I’ve been lucky enough to get in there with a lot of the people that I looked up to growing up.”
On signing a new AEW contract:
“It felt really cool. I was on a beach in Jamaica when I signed my contract.”
What is Kyle Fletcher grateful for?
“My health, my career and the people in my life.”
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