Kevin Kelly is reportedly no longer part of the AEW broadcast team.
PWTorch reports that Kelly has been fired by AEW. Kelly had been an announcer for AEW Collision since the show premiered in June 2023. After initially serving as Collision's lead play-by-play voice, Kelly was replaced in that role by Tony Schiavone last October. It became a three-man booth with Schiavone, Kelly, and Nigel McGuinness.
On Thursday (March 7), Kelly was removed from the roster page on AEW's website. Dave Meltzer was told that the situation was "an internal matter."
Kelly did not work Thursday night's AEW Collision taping.
Kelly sent out a tweet last weekend claiming that he had been benched in AEW due to being "libeled" by ROH announcer Ian Riccaboni. In August of last year, Riccaboni made posts on a Discord server that mentioned Kelly promoting "QAnon movies" (referencing Kelly's public support of the movie Sound of Freedom). Riccaboni admitted that the Discord posts were made by him but said he didn't know how Discord worked. Riccaboni said he should have read up on what was public and what was private, but he had no regrets about the posts.
"But the idea of what I bring to the table is lost there because Ian libeled me. So I sit on the bench, valued by my peers, waiting to get my number called," Kelly tweeted on March 2. "I keep asking why but get pushed aside. It’s ok because there is no one better than me. Ask the ones that know and they’ll tell you."
"It has affected my standing within the industry and I want corrective action taken," Kelly wrote in another tweet.
Kelly has previously done commentary for NJPW, ROH, and WWE.
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