Photo: Courtesy of All Elite Wrestling (Photographer: Lee South)
All Elite Wrestling star Ricochet broke his silence on an incident with WWE NXT wrestler Je'Von Evans that went viral last week during an exclusive interview with the Battleground Podcast released on Wednesday (May 14).
Ricochet, 36, who competed for WWE for six years before opting to not re-sign and making his AEW debut at All In last August, wrote that he would "squash" Evans in response to an X user who called the 21-year-old "the best young prospect in wrestling," which escalated into a back-and-forth between the two wrestlers with Evans later deleting his posts.
"A lot of people seemed upset about it," Ricochet said when asked about the incident with a smile.
Ricochet has recently flourished in a heel role, a vast difference from his WWE persona, during his tenure with AEW, which has led to both praise and criticism from fans online.
"I think what I'm doing is just living my life. I think everybody's out to get me but I'm finally just kind of living my own life and now everyone's just getting a chance to see it really," he said.
Ricochet had previously stated that WWE "ruined my love and passion" for wrestling and credited AEW for helping "me find that love again."
"I think just being able to creatively let me kind of flow, be myself, being able to show the world myself, my character and AEW's allowed that," Ricochet said during the Battleground interview. "They've allowed me to kind of go out there and try things whether it works or doesn't work, they've let me go out there and just open up creatively. Honestly, the reason why [wrestlers] got into it is the creativeness or whatever it is you want to call it but that's why we started it is because it's an art form that we live for. I've lived my whole life basically doing this and just being able to be myself it's awesome."
Ricochet will face Zach Gowen during AEW's live broadcast of its flagship show, Dynamite, airing live on TBS and streaming on MAX Wednesday night at 8:00 p.m. ET.