Kevin Kelly departs NJPW | NEW JAPAN PRO-WRESTLING

33 comments

1. > Thank you for supporting New Japan Pro-Wrestling.

   > Kevin Kelly, who has been the English voice of New Japan broadcasts since King of Pro-Wrestling 2015, has departed NJPW to pursue outside opportunities.

   > Kevin was originally planning to join the English broadcast of Wrestle Kingdom 18 on January 4, but will be unable to attend due to family commitments.

   > New Japan Pro-Wrestling joins fans in their gratitude for the work Kevin has done to grow the English-speaking audience for NJPW, and for countless memorable calls over the years. We wish Kevin the very best in his future.

   End of an era for sure. I really loved the time when you had Chris, Kevin and Rocky on commentary together, they all played off of each other so well.

2. He’ll be missed!! 😢

3. Gonna miss his Gino impression. It’s the Douki chokey Kevin!

4. I’ll miss him complaining about the A2 guy for half the show.

5. I feel bad for those who were fans. Hope his family stuff works out.

6. While I personally believe his quality dropped in the last year, looking at his time on commentary as a whole, he was fantastic.

7. Really sucks.

8. Sad that he doesn’t even get a proper goodbye, but I guess that’s how it is sometimes.

   I find the “pursue outside opportunities” language to be strange when everyone knows he’s left to join AEW.

9. I remember he said his reason for leaving was because his wife didn’t want to be alone. Completely understandable, he’d have to miss a big chunk of the holidays to make Wrestle Kingdom.

   I do wish he could have had a chance to say goodbye, but you can’t always get what you want. His last few months were soured by commentating by himself during the G1, and people learning that he’s into far right media. But his efforts bridged the gap for international fans to be able to enjoy NJPW to the level we do, and I’m grateful for that.

   His voice is behind some of my favorite NJPW moments, it wasn’t that long ago when people said you weren’t watching WK if you weren’t watching with Japanese commentary.

   One of the best to do it, I’ll miss him.

10. Some will say “AEW poached him” but in this case NJPW is benefitting from the timing, Kelly has been terrible for the past year and AEW fans haven’t been happy with his work there either

    As much as I respect the body of work and what he did for NJPW, the QAnon crap just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It’s just a disguise for the same antisemitic conspiracy crap that’s been floating around since the 1800’s and I feel zero respect or kindness for anyone who pushes it.

11. Very disappointed. Not because Kevin was great in NJPW, but because I can easily listen to Japanese New Japan but can only hear Kevin Kelly AEW.

    Legitimately do not understand what people are saying when they praise him and no idea what people are saying when they put dude over, he’s my least favourite English pbp guy in the business. Man stinks!

12. Nobody brought more viewers to the Japanese commentary than Kevin Kelly. He may now rest soundly amongst the other greats, like Mike Adamle, Todd Grisham and that guy from early ROH who was always like “This is REAL WRESTLING, not sports entertainment! REAL WRASSLING LIKE THE ROMANS DID!!”

    Also, he’s still commentating AEW, so he’s unfortunately not gone forever.

13. “How Dare You!!!”

    I really hope his future holds only the best for himself and his family ❤ we’ll miss you KK

14. The first time I saw NJPW was on AXS after Impact back in 2009 (?). I looked forward to watching each week until there was a change in programming. If it wasn’t for the English translation, I might never had watched NJPW. I enjoyed Kevin and Chris. I only heard about his political leanings recently on here.
    It never ceases to amaze the amount of complaining about small, petty things by wrestling fans.

    Best wishes to Kevin going forward.

15. I think by the end he was noticeably tired. I’m glad he’s making a change but I think the commentary team of him and Chris needed the excitement and spark of Gino as a counterbalance.

16. End of an era for sure.

17. Good to have this nut job away from njpw

18. [deleted]

19. I watched the G1 28 final back and that might be the best showing off his on commentary (even though overall him and Don was the best duo for sure) and after the celebrations him and Rocky talk about brining English commentary for all of the G1 for the first time and how much that and New Japan in general meant to him.

20. He has been really important to building guys up since NJPW doesn’t really have promo segments. The announcers have to tell the stories for wrestlers and Kelly did a great job with that.

21. I was hoping to meet him in WK show along with the rest of the English commentary team.

    I wish him the best!

22. The deep state finally got him

23. I’ll definitely miss him a lot. I started watching around 2014 and he started commentating not long after that, so he was definitely the voice of my favourite wrestling promotion for a long, long time.

24. Goodbye to Mr Kelly I really wanna thx him for the joy he has brought me while I’ve been watching NJPW he will truly be missed legend I will support regardless 🙇🏾‍♀️

25. No big miss, his call when Yuya Uemara re-debuted was one of the worst I’ve heard.

    “Thunder STORM…NXT name generator….woaaaaaah…The Young Lion…has come back…”

    His short-sentenced way of announcing is so horrible. He sounds like Cole & Taz in Smackdown Just Bring It.

26. Some of my favourite NJPW moments were when Kevin went off at Jado. “Hey!! You and that damn stick Jado!!!
    Get outta here! You son of a bitch! Yeah so what I don’t care you don’t care jerk.”

    Or the moment El Phantasmo was commentating and he started falsely translating for Sanada, something about his hair and then Kevin says “That’s not what he said! Be quiet!!”
    Kevin was great. He’ll be super missed.

27. Does he still do AEW?

28. Dang but I’m gonna miss his commentary work in NJPW

29. No one calls the finishers like him. Just won’t be the same.

30. 🙁

31. End of an era 😭

32. Shout out to Kevin, Chris, Gino, and Rocky at this year’s Wrestle Kingdom for being the best and only good four man booth I’ve ever heard.

33. I know there are people who don’t like his commentating but I really appreciated how he didn’t sound like all the other US commentators. Rather than telling me how amazing moments are he’d tell me what people were doing and how that fitted into what they’d done before, and allow me to decide if the moment was amazing or not. And yes, a little bit of light-hearted cynicism and sarcasm also helps me enjoy a show moreso than over-the-top selling of things that don’t need to be sold to me.

    I hope NJPW is able to continue with that approach to English commentary and not go towards the WWE/AEW way of doing it. It’s been a big contributor to my enjoyment of NJPW.