AEW's Don Callis Talks All In, Kyle Fletcher and His Family's Dominance | Inside The Ring

What is this, a cooking show, guys? I'm wrapping up and we're doing the wrap-up. Why don't we whip up a little risotto together, you guys? Do you not enjoy a nice meal, at least? Your whole life is about making lists about which countries have the best-looking women and men, I guess, and where you can get a good fish and chips in London. You said fish and chips. My God, I am going to fire whoever at AEW booked me for 20 minutes with you two monkeys. Good Lord, you guys are out of your minds. This is like a circus act here you're performing with me. What else would you like to know? Would you like to know when I had a shower last? How much I did bench press? You guys are unbelievable. This is TMZ's Inside the Ring. Welcome to TMZ's Inside the Ring. I'm Branson Quirk. I'm Roger Corral. Big weekend ahead. I know, dude. All in, baby. All in. Last I checked, and I don't know if this is an accurate number yet, but 43,000 tickets distributed for All In and Wembley. Damn, packed, man. Wow. Yeah. We can't go. I know. We can't be there. We asked. The powers that be are not sending us over there, but it's going to be stacked. Yeah, man. As it always is. Crowd's going to be loud. But this guy who's coming on today is really going to feel the energy of this over 40,000 people. This guy has turned being insufferable into a career. Yeah. Somehow. I don't know how. I know. I don't know how he did it, but he's here with us now. The head. The leader. He is Don Callis. The Don Callis family. Don Callis, welcome to TMZ. Good to be here. How are you doing today? Where can we find you now? I'm currently in my six-star hotel across from Hyde Park in London in a little area that I like to stay and was able to fit you guys in in between business dinners. So, happy to be here. Wow. Is this one of the infamous Don Callis dinners you just had? I'm not allowed to talk about what goes on behind closed doors. You guys know that. You're kidding. Okay. Last time. Let's address this right off the bat. We really hope that we can get you to tell us what happens at a Don Callis dinner. Like, can you just give us something? You know, like anything. It's a little bit like the Freemasons of which I am one. Oh. You're not allowed to talk about these things under penalty of some sort of physical violence. So, whatever your wildest imagination can think of is ten times cooler than that. Can I just ask? You guys are a bunch of dudes. Are there any women at these parties? Who needs women when you have Kyle Fletcher? When you have Kev Knight? When you have all of these prime athletes? It's all about business, man. He's right. He is right. They don't have time for that, dude. By the way, love your outfit. We did think it looks a little Mr. Rogers today. Was that the inspiration? Jeez, who writes this stuff for you guys? You guys probably get huge numbers with these jokes. I mean, hey, listen. If we want to get into a fashion statement, what I'm wearing probably costs more than the car you're driving around L.A. Or wherever you're from. Your car has been breaking down a lot. Yeah, and it's definitely cheaper than that. It's a very nice jacket. It looks like do you iron your clothes every morning, Don? I don't do anything for myself every morning, my friend. I have people. Wow. Kyle Fletcher is doing it. He's the one that's ironing the clothes. Actually, yeah, do you provide any fashion tips for your guys as well besides your wrestling guidance? Because Kyle Fletcher looks phenomenal anytime he goes out there. I've introduced Kyle and several of my guys, Kevin Knight as well, to some of my tailors, my bespoke individuals that work with me here in London, in New York, in Paris. So they have – listen, when you're in the Don Callis family and you're in that upper echelon as Kyle Fletcher is, you have access to the full suite of services. Wow. Well, technically, it can get expensive because the family is getting big. It's a big-ass family. It's a big family. It's so much bigger since the last time we spoke with you. What do you say to people that are criticizing how big it's getting? I've been criticized for how big I am my entire life. I mean, I'm larger than life, man. So here's the deal. What's the criticism? It's too big. I can't keep track of it. Exactly, exactly. It's hard to take care of. I am not running a wrestling faction. I am running a pro sports franchise. Think of it like that. And so people get hurt. People go on injured reserve. I move people up. The other thing is the more success that I have had with the Don Callis family, the more people are climbing over top of each other to get into it. So success breeds more success, and that's how it works. I mean, we're constantly being hit up, people wanting tryouts, word of mouth, whatever, and we're very, as you can see by the quality of athlete that we have, we're very discerning in terms of who we let into this thing. What leads you to saying no constantly to talent that is constantly hitting you up? Well, we have a very high standard athletically. If you look at the guys in my group, I mean, you're talking most guys are between 6'2 and 6'4, similar builds because I look for genetic markers such as long arms, big hands. A lot of the same kind of standards they use when they build an NFL football team or when they scout college players for the NFL draft. So a lot of my guys are in what I would call the Lou Fez mold, 6'3, 6'4, 220 to 235. Kyle's a little heavier than that at times depending on how heavy he's lifting. But you look at Kyle, you look at Okada, you look at Kevin Knight, Takeshita before I fired him, Kenny Omega before he made a catastrophic decision for his career by trying to think for himself, which has never been Kenny's strong suit. So yeah, first off, you've got to pass that bar. Then you've got to have the right intellectual makeup. Kenny is an example since we're talking about him today. Kenny was a guy who had all the athletic gifts you could ever want, tested off the charts in every test I ever applied to him. The problem was there was a mental weakness. Kenny wanted to listen to the Bucs. Kenny wanted to listen to his parents. And so I look for guys who are willing to buy in, to be all in as it turns out. Since you're mentioning talking about running this like a sports franchise, I actually did the math. Well, not me, it was AI. But I asked my AI stimulation to give me the win-loss percentage of the Don Kalos family for 2026. And you are at 52%. Above average. Yeah, above average, but not that much. So if I'm trying to get into the Don Kalos family, what exactly are you helping to provide here when it's barely above 50%? Geez, Roger, calm down. Spoken like a guy who's never played a competitive sport at a high level. That's like saying, gee, you know, I looked at all the numbers for the offensive linemen on your football team and, geez, they don't score a lot of touchdowns. That's because that's not their job to score touchdowns. Their job is to fit into the overall team to do the work so that the tailback, the wide receiver, the quarterback can get, you want to call it the glory, get the stats, get the points, or whatever. Everyone has a role. Not everyone can be the starting quarterback like Kyle Fletcher. So when you take a simplistic percentage like, oh, well, 52%, means nothing to me. The bottom line is this. Throw all your stats out the window, man. Here's the deal. This thing of ours is the biggest and most successful franchise, faction, whatever you want to call it in the wrestling business. Find me a faction anywhere in AEW that has the talent that I have just in the top half of my group, never mind the rest of the guys who are tremendous as well. So you're using simplistic stats, you're doing 1 plus 1 equals 2, and I'm working on quantum physics here, guys. I just want to know that I did wrestling in high school. You did wrestling? I did. And then I stopped. You stopped. No. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Just want to know. I'm sure it was your choice to stop, too. Yeah, yeah. I went for a career. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about Kyle this weekend. Looks like it's working out great from those T-shirts you guys are wearing. Yeah, yeah. Oh. Hey, I actually own some true classic T-shirts that really show the body, you know? Oh, wow. It tightens up in the arms. It's loose in the tummy. Yeah, you've been looking good, dude. Thank you. Maybe you get invited to one of these dinners. Yeah, maybe I could get invited to a dinner one day. Yeah, that'd be nice. Yeah. All right, all right. Question for you. We got to talk about Kyle this weekend. So he's defending his title on Sunday. Now, let's say he loses, hypothetically. Is it possible he might lose his spot in the family because of that? Is it possible? Kyle Fletcher will never lose his spot in the Don Callis family. Kyle Fletcher is the product of many sets of testing that I have done. So I started with Kenny Omega, and then I upgraded at the time to Kunosuke Takeshita. Then I had Will Ospreay, if you recall. In fact, Will Ospreay only was ever able to beat Kenny Omega, by his own admission, with my help when I was managing, when he was in the family. So, you know, you start to work all the bugs out of the system, and then what you end up with, genetic perfection. And that's what I've got with Kyle Fletcher. There's not one thing about Kyle I would change. There's not one thing about him that I would say, geez, if only this was a little bit better, we could do this. Kyle Fletcher will be in the Don Callis family as long as there is breath in Don Callis' body. And I like to think Kyle Fletcher will carry my name on forward into the future for 30, 40, 50 years. He is destined to become the greatest professional wrestler in the history of this industry. Wow. I wonder how Okada feels. Crazy. I'll tell you how Okada feels. Okada understands. Okada has, is at a different stage in his career than Kyle. Okada has been, as you guys know, IWGP champion. He's been international champion. He has been the continental champion. Okada now loves being a part of something. He loves being a part of a family. This is a guy who moved from Japan to New York City to the USA. Didn't speak any English. And now through the help of the Don Callis family, his English is incredible. And he is accomplishing incredible things. So when Wayne Gretzky went from the Edmonton Oilers to the L.A. Kings, he'd already set all the scoring records. Now he wanted to be a part of something. He wanted to be a part of a fabric in Los Angeles. He wanted to grow the league. Okada is a builder. So not everyone has the same goals all the time. So I think Okada will be great supporting Kyle now, tomorrow, next year, and into the future. You mentioned Will Ospreay. I just want to know, Will Ospreay had a one-on-one with Kenny Omega this week, and he let everyone know, it's one of his biggest regrets, and it eats him up alive that his one victory over Kenny Omega involved you. He had your assistance in defeating Kenny Omega, and that eats him alive. He regrets it. How do you feel about that? Well, isn't hindsight a wonderful thing to sit there and say that? Geez, I should play you guys the tapes. I have the audio tapes of every conversation I've ever had with talent and every conversation I've ever had with Will Ospreay. I should release those. When he was begging me, please get me in the ring with Kenny Omega, and I did that for him. I don't think I can beat Kenny. Please help me. And I did that. I want to wrestle Chris Jericho at Wembley Stadium, and I made that happen. So it's all very convenient now that Will is on his own, and I'll give Will credit. He's done a tremendous job. This kid is a great athlete. But like Kenny, they have something in common, and that's mental weakness, although I will say this. The Kenny Omega I've seen, guys, the last little while, it's rare that I say that I may have miscalculated something. But this Kenny Omega, the last few months, he really has been the best wrestler on the planet. I didn't think he had it in him. But once again, it's got my handiwork all over it because the crucible that I put Kenny Omega through for the last two, three years, how I tortured him, how I showed him he was nothing without me, toughened him mentally. And now what you're seeing is a Kenny Omega that I didn't think I would ever see again, and it's a Kenny Omega that's going to be very difficult to beat at Wembley Stadium, as great as Will Ospreay is. Kenny Omega's in the zone right now. And you're taking credit for that? Of course I am. Okay. Who's Kenny Omega without Don Callis? His first A.W. World title was because of me. Have you guys been watching the show? They're talking about it. Kenny and Will are talking about it. Well, if it weren't for Don, now in retrospect, I wish I hadn't done it, but you did it. You took the money, you took the fame, you took the titles, and you took everything I gave you. And then you thought you could do it on your own, found out you couldn't, and now you're going to whine about it. Very nice. Very nice. I tend to try to live in the moment, not live in the past and say, coulda, shoulda, woulda. It sounds like everyone else in backstage is just taking, taking, taking, taking, and all you do is give, right? That's exactly right. I say that all the time. All I do is give. But, you see, I'm not about getting attention for myself. I'm not about getting more fame and money. I've had all that. I'm about shaping the industry. They call me the invisible hand for a reason because everything that's happening right now in A.W. has got my fingerprints on it. Watch the show. Watch the package they put together. Listen to Will and Kenny. Don Callis, Don Callis, Don Callis, Don Callis. Without me, those two are not where they are right now. And I will say this. It's very rare that I will sit and get excited to watch a wrestling match. But I am very, very pumped up, very excited. I'll be there right to the end because I want to see this match. Because, again, I love watching how people react to pressure. I put my talent under pressure all the time. People say, oh, there's people in Don Callis' family fighting. That's by design. That's pressure. That's testing talent. Will Ospreay is going to be tested. His mental focus is going to be tested. He's like, oh, home field advantage. The pressure on Will Ospreay to be in Wembley Stadium, not going up against the Kenny Omega from two years ago or a year ago or six months ago. This is a Kenny Omega that Will Ospreay has not experienced. This is a Kenny Omega who is mentally at peace. Kenny Omega is in a Zen state right now where he is just making everything he wants happen. Athletically, he's still Kenny Omega. But mentally, he's channeling a little inner Don Callis. So I think this is just going to be probably the most incredible wrestling match that anybody's ever seen, not just for the physicality of it, but for what's on the line for both Kenny and Will Ospreay, and Will specifically. So I'm not picking a winner. I kind of think I know who's going to win. But I am going to watch because whoever loses is going to make me very happy. Let's just put it like that. Clearly you're not taking, like I said, and you're willing to do anything for your men, for your people, for the family, including a couple weeks ago where you actually got involved and you went after Jericho on the ring, and people criticized you because it didn't go so well. I want to give you a chance to explain yourself. Should you still get involved physically in these matches, or should you maybe stay away from that? You said earlier all I do is give. Once in a while I need a little something from me. I've known Chris Jericho since 1990. I've never liked him. Never liked him. He's insufferable. And the fact that Jericho is back now and wrestling at a super high level and just doing things that he shouldn't be able to do at his age makes me physically sick. So when I see Jericho taking liberties with the great Kevin Knight, the Jet, the TNT champion, when I see him punching Kevin Knight in that beautiful face of Kevin's, when I see him trying to injure Kevin Knight, trying to take his legs out, trying to go after a knee, sometimes I lose my temper. And that was a case of 30-odd years of hatred boiling up to the surface. Wow. I have a question about taste. I know you're Canadian. MJF this week approached a woman that was a dynamite, and he called her a Scotland 10, a U.S. 4. As a man who has traveled the globe and now you're in the U.K., I want your top three countries of hottest women out there. I would never even notice that. I'm too busy keeping my eyes on Kyle Fletcher. That's the money, man. Well said. Wow. Geez. It's all business. My gosh, dude. Why would anyone want to look at anything other than Kyle Fletcher if you had him in the room? Why would anyone want to do anything other than watch Kevin Knight matches? Why would anyone want to do anything other than to listen to Okada? You guys are at a level of unconscious living where you're like, hey, what's on the TV tonight? Oh, who's good looking and who's not? I'm operating at a different level, guys. Those base emotions that guys like you sitting in wherever it is that you live in Los Angeles in your sweatpants and your designer shirts, as you call them, keep looking, keep asking questions. Let's make a top 10 list of this. Kyle Fletcher and I are operating at a different level and Okada and Kevin Knight and Brian Cage, and I could go on and on. He likes Kyle Fletcher more than his girlfriend. I was going to say, Don, you're quite literally saying that maybe if not the most important thing in life doesn't matter, and that's love. You're saying love doesn't matter, right? I love control. I love money. I love power. I love showing everyone how smart I am, and they go, I can't believe he pulled that off. That's what I love. I love shaping the business. Listen, God gifted me with being the absolute best at what I do. There's no one else like me. There's never been anyone else like me. While some people are the best hedge fund manager, good for them, I happen to be the best at this. Professional wrestling and AEW is my canvas, and every week, Kyle Fletcher and I, Okada and I, Kevin Knight and I, Josh Alexander and I, I could go on and on. We're painting masterpieces, and we're changing the industry and rewriting the history books. You cannot write the history of professional wrestling without the Don Callis family, and it's just getting more like that as we move forward in the future. Dude, he doesn't care about win-loss records. He doesn't care about love. It's crazy, dude. He doesn't care about anything except that, and I respect that. I admire that. Moving on, Mark Davis, how is he blending? Is this a trial period? Listen, I don't have favorites, but kind of the apple of my eye can shift around a little bit sometimes on a week-to-week basis. I think Mark Davis is maybe the greatest accomplishment that I've ever had in terms of recruiting someone, bringing them in. When you look at what he's done, Mark Davis is a future world champion. In fact, I believe Mark Davis, since he, as I announced on Dynamite, Mark Davis is a guy who is going to bring the AEW world title back to the Don Callis family. Once he does his business with a little London luck and all in, Mark Davis is going to be the AEW world champion. When you look at Mark Davis, this is a guy who's 6'4", he's 260. He reminds people of Bruiser Brody, Terry Gordy, Stan Hansen. He is relentless. Mark Davis, some days, is my favorite wrestler in the world. He's just such an incredible, incredible athlete. And again, big hands, long arms, guys. That's how we scout him here. You know what they say about big hands. You don't have to take it there. Okay. Come on. All right. Don, I want to actually take a big left turn here. I want to go back to you as a child. I don't know anything about you other than what I see on TV. I want to know about the real Don growing up. Is this what you wanted to do when you were a kid? You want. That's what you want. You want to know personal details about my upbringing. Well, isn't that nice? You're not going to get them. But I will tell you a couple of things. Dude. I was invited into Mensa at age 3. My IQ was tested when I was 6 years old. It was 185. Look that up. What's a good IQ? What's the good one? The fact that you're asking that question. 100 is an average person. You're probably sitting at 55 based on my analysis of just watching you through a camera lens. But I quit Mensa because it was very boring for me. I clearly had a genius level IQ. The great thing about pro wrestling is without pro wrestling, 50 years ago, someone like me might be living behind a fence. They would have called me a sociopath, all sorts of horrible names. But one of the reasons I've been successful is I don't have empathy. I don't possess that chip. It just seems like Kenny Omega has a lot of empathy. It's weakness. So however you want to diagnose me or you want to put me in a box, get a team of psychiatrists from Switzerland to examine me, I'll turn the tables on them very quickly because I'm smarter and I don't possess the weakness that everyone else does. I don't care about things that you care about. I don't love the things that you love. And that is what lets me be the best that's ever done this. And you can put that on your little headline on the internet. That'll be a nice headline. I will say, Kenny Omega is a world heavyweight champion, so obviously empathy has taken him far. I'm just saying there is still room to change, Don. Actually, I will say this. You're wrong once again. Kenny Omega we are seeing now has a complete lack of empathy, certainly has no empathy for Will Ospreay from what I've been watching on the television, to which I say all that work I've been doing with Kenny since he was 9 years old All of that has finally taken hold, and Kenny Omega is finally only thinking about Kenny Omega, has no empathy for Will Ospreay. And that is going to be very difficult for Will to deal with. So, again, both great athletes, this has the potential physically to be the greatest match in the history of our industry. What you're really seeing here, it's a battle to see who's going to be world champion, but it's also, isn't it kind of a battle of the two generally acknowledged best wrestlers of the last, what, 10-15 years? Who's really the best? It's not even a rubber match, as Kenny said, because the second match almost didn't count, because Will had to cheat. So, what you're seeing right now is Dream Match doesn't even begin to cover what this is. I'm very excited to watch it, and I think it's going to be something that is going to be remembered in the history books, just like me, forever. Wow. Hey, you know, just wrapping up here, since you're out there in London, are you enjoying yourself? How do you like the British people? The food? Is there a dish you like? What is this, a cooking show? I'm wrapping up, and we're doing the wrap-up. What is this? Why don't we whip up a little risotto together? Do you not enjoy a nice meal, at least? Your whole life is about making lists about which countries have the best-looking women and men, I guess, and where you can get a good fish and chips in London. You think I care about any of that? My God, I am going to fire whoever at AEW booked me for 20 minutes with you two monkeys. Good Lord, you guys are out of your minds. This is like a circus act here you're performing with me. What else would you like to know? Would you like to know when I had a shower last, how much I did bench press? You guys are unbelievable. Come on. Wow. Well, I mean, he got us there. I really had nothing left to say except, hey, if you want to get tickets this weekend, tickets are still available, and they're going fast. They're selling like hotcakes. If you can't get a ticket, you can't fly out to London like us, you're going to watch it on pay-per-view, right? You know what? Why don't you guys come to London? I'll send you a couple of economy tickets, and you can come out here and we can pretend we care about things. Now we're talking. Let's go. You guys did such a terrible job of promoting this show. I just want to say, AEW all in London, live this Sunday from Wembley Stadium, live on pay-per-view and HBO Max pay-per-view. This is, of course, the third time AEW has run Wembley Stadium, and I've been there for all of them, and the Invisible Hand has been a part of all of them. So it's going to be fantastic. Yeah, you got to boot out all of them. Everyone's talking about the main event. Do not sleep on the three-way between Okada, Takeshita, and Kyle Fletcher. That is going to be a work of art that is going to go down in the annals as one of the great moments in the history of all elite wrestling, and I'll be right there for that too. You heard it there. You heard it from Don himself. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Don, for what it's worth.