Kevin told his wife to tell him when it is time to step away.
Dating back to 2015, Kevin Kelly has served as one of the voices of English commentary for New Japan Pro-Wrestling. In September 2023, Kelly shared that he’ll be finishing up with New Japan after Wrestle Kingdom 18 on 1/4/24.
Joining Aubrey Edwards and Will Washington for the newest episode of AEW Unrestricted was Kevin Kelly. He further dove into his decision to leave NJPW next year. He reiterated that it’s because his wife does not want to be alone. Kevin told her to tell him when it’s time to step away and then he’ll stop going to Japan.
Kelly stated that everyone misses special family events and accolades, but when it gets to the point when he’s consistently missing Christmas, anniversaries and birthdays, it becomes too much.
Because my wife said, ‘I don’t wanna be alone anymore’ (is why I’m choosing to step away from NJPW). I’m not lying.
We’ve been together 33 years and married 30. So, I told her, ‘When the time is right, you tell me and I will stop going to Japan’ because I’ve been gone like weeks at a time, months at a time. Come home briefly, go right back for weeks at a time and of course we’ve all missed birthdays and family occasions and those types of things. But, when you’re missing Christmas and you’re missing New Year’s and you’re missing anniversaries and you’re missing everything, it just gets to be too much. So, when this AEW opportunity came around and the first conversation that Tony (Khan) and I had was about still keeping up my New Japan commitments and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s fine. We’ll have Ian or somebody fill in for you. It’ll be great, no problem.’ He and I figured it would probably be like 12 dates a year, 12 weeks a year I would miss and I talked to Doria about it and she was like, ‘I don’t wanna be alone anymore’ and I was like, ‘Okay. Say no more.’ That’s it. I talked to New Japan, I talked with Tony, Mike Mansury and said, ‘Here’s what I could do. I’ve got these two that I definitely have to do for New Japan. But then, after that, I’m just gonna be here in the States,’ here in North America within a couple of hours flight. Be gone away from home as much as AEW needs me, but I’ll always be that close… I’ll never be more than half-a-day away.
Alongside Nigel McGuinness, Kelly is on the call for AEW Collision on Saturdays. He spoke about adjusting to calling live television.
And doing it all very quickly (communicating to viewers watching on TV). Because I have not done television in 20 years. I’ve done Ring of Honor television, but that was live-to-tape. So, it wasn’t live TV. New Japan Pro-Wrestling, every event that I call is televised, but it’s not television. It’s sports-like coverage of a wrestling event. The camera turns on when the show begins and shuts off when the show ends. There are no commercial breaks, there are no stopdowns. So, getting used to that flow. With New Japan, I have three hours to tell a story. Sometimes during the main event, something will happen in that main event that reminds me of something that happened in the very first match. ‘Remember folks when I told you this, well here it is and it took us three hours to get here.’ I don’t have that time in AEW. That’s been the biggest adjustment for me. Everything’s happening so fast and the moment’s gone and then I think of it later, but it’s too late. I’m trying to do it all in super condensed bytes.
Within that same conversation, Kelly heaped praise onto Nigel. He stated that he’s only gotten better since their days calling the action of Ring of Honor.
And he’s gotten just better since then (Kevin Kelly said about Nigel McGuinness on commentary in ROH). All of his time, all of his experience doing television over the last few years. He’s a consummate pro, he knows who he is. He’s become a master and is teaching me things and is guiding me through a lot of this because he has a lot more recent television experience than I do.
Replacing Kevin Kelly on English commentary is Walker Stewart. He was on the call for NJPW Fighting Spirit Unleashed along with Veda Scott.
The next episode of AEW Collision is emanating from INTRUST Bank Arena in Wichita, Kansas. POST Wrestling’s weekly reviews of Collision can be found here.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit AEW Unrestricted with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
