AEW’s Kyle Fletcher: ‘I’m not a finished product’

Kyle Fletcher entered AEW as one-half of a midcard tag team in 2022. Four years later, he’s a decorated singles champion and a key figure in the promotion’s top heel faction. But that doesn’t mean he’s satisfied. 

Fletcher talked about his career in an interview with Julian Cannon of the Knockturnal.

“I’m not a finished product, and I don’t think I ever want to be a finished product,” he said. “I want to constantly be evolving with the business.”

Cannon had asked Fletcher about shaving his head when he started his heel run in AEW.

“It was it was something that wasn’t necessarily done overnight,” Fletcher said. “I didn’t come in on that day with like a fully fleshed out character, and I didn’t go, ‘This is who I am. this is who the new Kyle Fletcher is.’ I knew what the starting point was. I knew that I wanted to get rid of my hair. I wanted to have like a clean slate. I wanted to start from scratch.”

The head-shaving was just the first part in Fletcher re-inventing himself. 

“And then from there, it really was just building it from the ground up,” he explained. “I think one of the things I love about pro wrestling is it’s constantly evolving and constantly changing. And I think as a character, you also have to do that. I don’t think you can come in and be married to ‘this is what I am, this is who I am, I’m sticking with this no matter what,’ because, you know, might not work. You have literally a live audience there giving you feedback and if something’s not working, you got to switch it up. You got to find something else.” 

“So when I came in, I did the head shave, it really did feel like a clean slate,” Fletcher continued. “So after that, from that point onwards, I was trying stuff out. I was trying new gear. I was trying new ways of speaking, new whatever, whatever look it was. So I was trying things out and it took a while and some things didn’t stick and some things did. And then I think over time you kind of start, ‘okay, that worked. I’ll keep that. Okay, that worked. I’ll keep that. Okay, here’s this other idea. Let me try and implement that. Oh my god, everyone loved that.’ And I think it is still evolving and still changing, which I think is the beautiful part of it.”

Fletcher will be defending the AEW International Championship against Bandido at Redemption this Sunday, July 26. The event is in Montreal, and Cannon asked Fletcher if we can expect any Bret Hart-level controversy.

“I think the most likely controversy to come out of my match is Bandido being decapitated or severely injured to the point where he goes home and cries to his mother,” Fletcher replied.