AEW star Kyle Fletcher responds to Stevie Richards criticism

AEW star Kyle Fletcher is open to receiving criticism, but he doesn’t feel like recent comments from Stevie Richards were in particularly good faith.

Richards — best known for his time competing in ECW and WWE — now has a YouTube channel where he comments on the industry. The channel made an upload this week titled “What is Kyle Fletcher Missing?” In the video, Richards said he views Fletcher as someone who has potential but needs more seasoning and someone to teach him how to work, particularly in terms of psychology. Richards believes Fletcher needs harder coaching — and he could see Fletcher ending up in WWE NXT.

“He looks like an eventual NXT Superstar,” Richards said.

The comments got a lot of attention on social media, and Fletcher has now addressed them while speaking with The Ringer Wrestling Show.

“Of course, yeah,” Fletcher responded when asked if he saw what Richards said. “I think a lot of people on Twitter or whatever will just look at the one clip that gets posted. I went and I watched the full thing, everything that he said. Look, I’m not going to — I’m open to any and all critiques. That is fine. I’m in a world where it’s like, everyone is allowed to have an opinion. He has an opinion on who I am and what I am as a wrestler, and that’s fine.

“It just doesn’t feel like it’s in good faith, if that makes sense. I think a lot of those guys, they just kind of look for the buzzwords and look for the things that are going to get clicks or whatever. I don’t think he spoke a lot about, like, what the culture is at AEW. I don’t think he knows anything about the culture at AEW. He said there’s no one there for me to learn from. I think that’s absolute f*cking horsesh*t, you know what I mean? I am learning from people every single day that I’m there. There’s so many great minds there. There’s Bryan Danielson there almost every week.

“I mean, I’m open to criticism. I just don’t think it was in the best faith. But no ill will. I’m open to critique at any and all times. I’m 26 years old. I’m still trying to learn this business, man. I have a lot more room to grow, for sure.”

After being a tag team specialist early in his career, Fletcher has broken out into one of AEW’s top rising singles stars. He’s set for a huge match on September 20 when he challenges Hangman Page for the AEW World Championship at All Out.

The All Out pay-per-view has been moved to the afternoon after WWE made an attempt to directly counter-program the show with its Wrestlepalooza PLE. During his appearance on The Ringer Wrestling Show, Fletcher was asked if he feels any extra motivation for All Out given the WWE competition.

“Yeah, I think there has to be a little bit of that, right?,” Fletcher said. “It’s in my very competitive nature to just be like, ‘All right, if this is what you want to do, I’m just going to go out there and I’m going to absolutely kill it. And then what are you going to say about it?’

“So, yeah, there is a little bit of that. I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform at the highest level and under these high-pressure scenarios. But, yeah, I think this is probably the biggest opportunity I’ve had to this point to really go out there and show out. I just got to go out there and do what I know I can do, and then stick it to them, you know what I mean?”