During a recent appearance on the Insiders Edge podcast, former WWE backstage interviewer Kevin Kelly spoke about his time in the company and how he refused WWE’s first attempt at terminating him. Kelly stayed with the company for a few years afterward before ultimately departing in 2003.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On what he said when Jim Ross initially came to fire him in 2001: “I was in the process of buying a house. The closing was in a couple of weeks away. You can’t fire me. I’ve already told my landlord that I’m moving. I’m buying a house. ‘Do you even know what I do, JR? Do you even know how many hats I wear? Who is going to do all the jobs that I do if you’re letting me go? We need to talk about this because it’s not going to work for me.’ He said, ‘Okay.’ I was going to get fired, what’s the worst that could happen? He was going to shoot me with a gun? I didn’t call him an asshole or MFer, I just said, ‘Hey, no.’”
On how he eventually parted ways with WWE: “Then, when they finally did fire me, I knew it was coming, but I was the last one to get cut. It was 03 and they were going department by department. You hear about it, people getting let go. I knew it was coming. I was in the last round. Everyone was very nice. They said, ‘You were here almost seven full years. We will treat that as eight years and give you four months of severance.’ I said, ‘I did a lot of work while I was here. I had two or three jobs at a time, I would like six months severance please. I feel I deserve it.’ The lady said, ‘Okay.’ Again, why not ask? What’s the worst that will happen? I didn’t ask for anything ridiculous. I asked for a couple extra months of severance.”
