Kyle Fletcher has explained the motivation behind his drastic change in appearance earlier this year. Speaking on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, the Don Callis Family member revealed that shaving his head was a calculated decision to distance himself from comparisons to his former United Empire stablemate, Will Ospreay.
“It started off that we knew we were going to do this Ospreay feud, and that was what we were leaning towards,” Fletcher said. “It was just one of those things where I was getting sick of my hair, my blonde hair, and I was wanting to change it anyway. So I just broached the idea. I can’t remember who I said it to originally, it might have been in the room with Tony. I was like, ‘Hey, I want to get rid of my hair. Is there some way we could use it in this storyline?’ The way we landed on it was me shaving it myself. It felt like a definitive change, a definitive moment to me. I was literally shedding the skin of being in Ospreay’s shadow; I was trying to get out of that.”
Fletcher admitted that while being compared to one of the best wrestlers in the world is flattering, he is determined to establish his own identity. He noted that the comparisons shifted to another legend once he debuted the new look.
“It’s one of those things where for a hot second you take it as a compliment,” Fletcher said regarding the Ospreay comparisons. “At the surface level, it’s like, Oh, thanks. I think Will’s incredible at what he does. So I take that as a compliment. But then I feel the more I sit with it, and the more I hear it, the more it makes me go, No, I don’t want to be anyone else. I don’t want to be the second coming of Will Ospreay. I think after shaving the head, I got a lot of Randy Orton [comparisons], and it’s the same feeling of at first, that’s really cool, that’s a great comparison. But I really want to start carving my own path, and I don’t want to be the second anybody else.”
The segment where Fletcher shaved his head live on television was a nerve-wracking experience for the young star, mostly because he wasn’t sure what was underneath.
“I also hadn’t had a buzzed head since I was five or six years old,” Fletcher added. “So I’d never seen the shape of my head as an adult. So I’m like, man, what if I go on TV and I have weirdly shaped lumps or something like that? So yeah, it was pretty nerve-wracking.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. Subscribe to Insight with Chris Van Vliet on YouTube.
