Kevin Kelly Discusses His AEW Exit, Issues With Ian Riccaboni

Kevin Kelly’s AEW tenure came to an end in March, and he recently detailed his exit as well as his issues with Ian Riccaboni. The announcer joined the company in June of 2023 to do play-by-play for AEW Collision, but stopped short in March when he was reportedly fired. It was reported at the time that Kelly’s social media posts, which accused Riccaboni of libel for accusing him of spreading Q’Anon theories through his support of the controversial hit film Sound of Freedom, where the reason for his release.

Kelly shared his side of the story in an virtual signing for K&S WrestleFest. You can see the highlights below, per Fightful:

On whether Riccaboni was ‘plotting against him’: “Sure felt like it. It still makes no sense. Ian Riccaboni, I met him at the Monster Factory, Bob Evans said to me, ‘You need to meet Ian. He’s really good and special. He should get a look for Ring of Honor.’ I went to the seminar, met him, ‘Let’s see how you do. Come on with me, we’ll start doing some local (shows).’ He made some long drives and did it the right way. He called dark matches and Women of Honor so it would be unique and different branding. We got along great and worked together on shows. Everything was fine. When Joey Mercury left, I found out Ian was putting the mouth on me in the office after I was gone because I went to New Japan. I talked to some people about it and I was like, ‘Ah, I’m not going to worry about it.'”

On joining AEW and his issues with Riccaboni: “I start doing AEW and Tony Khan told me, ‘I wanted Ian Riccaboni to do Collision, but he couldn’t because of his day job.’ So, Ian recommended me. Great, cool. I go away to the G1, it was five weeks, I come back and Ian is [talking about me] on Discord and a New Japan message board that I did all these different things to him over the years, which I never knew, I had no clue. 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. If he would have called me, we could have talked about it. ‘Hey Kevin, listen, you’re really pissing me off.’ Even if we would have agreed to never be friends, and he would have called me up to say, ‘F you, I hate you, I never want to see you again,’ at least I would have known where I stood. Then, I could work towards fixing what I had done wrong.

“Instead, the way that he went about it painted me with a nasty brush. It was done on purpose so that the fans would turn against me. He did it in a New Japan Discord board. People were messaging me, that I’m friends with, I go there all the time. That’s how I found out about it. Post-G1, I wake up, ‘Let’s see what they’re saying about us. Hey, wait a minute, what the hell.’ People that I’m friendly with were like, ‘What is Ian doing? Why is he doing this?’ I have no idea, so I message him. ‘What’s going on?’ ‘You said and did a bunch of different things to me over the years, so I’m pissed off about it.’ ‘Okay, let’s talk about it.’ ‘I’ll only talk if you guarantee you’re not going to record the call.’ I wouldn’t know how to record a call. ‘Sure, we need to talk about it.'”

On his tenure with AEW ending: “Then, things started to change within AEW. 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. I was calling matches that were just like AEW and all of a sudden now, I have all these people in my ear and all this format stuff. ‘Why do we have to do things the same way Dynamite is?’ That’s what I said. ‘Why do we have to be the same show? Don’t we want Collision to be different?’ Whether it was split because of CM Punk and the Bucks, I have no idea. That was never brought up. It was a separate show, Saturday night, let’s make it different and do different things. I’m different than Taz, Excalibur, and Schiavone.

“The handwriting was on the wall. It wasn’t going to work, and I was getting more and more pissed off. I talked to the AEW office about it, I talked to them and I told them I was mentally getting in a bad spot over this too. I vented. When I vented, that’s when they let me go. No harm, no foul with AEW. Big blame there. I was willing to straighten things out with Ian. I feel terrible that he was mad at me over something that he never told me and it led to a bunch of different problems.”

On if he worked things out with Riccaboni: “One incident in particular, he did spell out for me. I did say it to him, I meant it in a….I won’t go into it. I didn’t get a chance to explain it, but I understood how it could be taken the wrong way. The other thing he said was I knocked him for wearing a hat on Collision, which I did, the cowboy hat, because he’s sitting next to Jim Ross. They were in Calgary for the Stampede. I was saying it because, guess what, you’re going to get heat from JR if you’re wearing a cowboy hat sitting next to him. Whether he says it’s okay or not, that doesn’t matter. It was born in Calgary and the Stampede. He’s the one that wears a fucking cowboy hat, why would you do that? Ian got upset about that. Give me a break.”

On if he has ill feelings towards AEW: “Of course. I wouldn’t treat my worst enemy like that.”

On who told him he was being let go: “Mike Mansury, the executive producer, and the new vice president of human resources, who I had never met or spoken to ever before. I knocked the company on Twitter and vented on voicemail to the HR lady that I had been working with. I brought up this whole thing with Ian and they said, ‘thank you for bringing this up.’ ‘What’s going to happen?’ ‘We’ll discuss it and let you know.’ Apparently, the disciplinary committee got together and made a decision. ‘What was the decision?’ ‘We can’t tell you, it’s private.’ ‘I was the victim here, I need to know what happened to put this to bed in my mind.’ ‘We can’t tell you.’ ‘This is upsetting to me, you have to understand.’ ‘We understand, we don’t care.’ Whatever. They’ll get theirs… Was I brought in exclusively because of CM Punk, who wasn’t going to have Excalibur call the show, and then when Punk is gone, ‘Now, we can get rid of Kevin’? I don’t know.”