Kyle Fletcher is no stranger to big moments.
At just 26-years-old, “The ProtoStar” of The Don Callis Family has some incredible notches in his belt. Including wrestling the opening match at AEW All In 2023 in front of a record-setting audience.
“I was the first person to walk out in front of that crowd,” he told NZPWI. “It’s pretty crazy, huh?
“It’s one of those moments where before it happens, before you actually walk out there, you can’t even fathom that it’s a real thing. If someone was to even say it before it happened, I’d be like, ‘Oh, it’s not real. That’s not a real thing. There’s not 80,000 people right behind this curtain. It doesn’t exist’. And then walking through the curtain, I can never fully absorb it in the moment. I feel like there’s a trillion things going through my mind that I have to think of: the match, what I have to do, the times, whatever, there’s so much going on, there’s so much stress around it – there’s people hundreds of metres away up that way, I can’t even see them, they’re just a blur – it’s so weird, it’s such a weird feeling.
“Now looking back and being like, ‘That’s something that I did,’ it’s something I’ll be proud of forever. My mum talked to me about it today, ‘That one was the one where I was like, ‘Okay maybe he’s made it’’. It’s something that I will cherish for the rest of my life.”
Beginning his career under a mask as the social media-inspired InstaGraham, Fletcher has had several breakout moments.
From debuting in New South Wales, to venturing abroad, to signing a contract with New Japan Pro-Wrestling, to finding his way to AEW and The Don Callis Family, and many more inbetween.
“There’s these moments in time, matches where it feels like you reach another level,” he said. “I think if I go back through my entire career I could probably point out every single one, I reckon there’s like, off the top of my head, 10 probably I could go like, ‘This was one, this was one’. I think probably the most recent one was, not even Ospreay ‘cause since then I beat Shelton Benjamin, I beat Okada, y’know what I mean? There’s just so many of these big cool moments that are, yeah, I would call them levelling up, that’s how I would characterise them.”
As one of the great success stories of Australian wrestling, Fletcher has every right to expect a hero’s welcome at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre for Grand Slam: Australia on Saturday night. But being so unlikeable on AEW TV, he’s not sure what to expect.
“The fun part is, I have no idea,” he said of his reception. “I can hypothesise, I can think about, ‘Oh, this is what I hope it will be’, but I have no idea whatsoever, and I think that’s what’s going to make it so cool. The energy in the building’s going to be so one-of-a-kind and I don’t think you’ll be able to replicate it. When I walk out there I’m going to be like everyone else, I’m not going to have a single clue what’s going on until I’m out there, so, yeah, I’m looking forward to it.”
Kyle Fletcher teams with Konosuke Takeshita to wrestle Kenny Omega & Will Ospreay at AEW Grand Slam: Australia, streaming Sunday, February 16, from 4:30pm (NZDT) on TrillerTV.
