Stevie Richards Says WWE Has Become ‘Soulless’ Under TKO

Stevie Richards used the 100th episode of his show to crown a non-WWE match the best of the year and to lay into WWE’s creative direction.

Joined by co-host James Romero, Richards spent a long stretch of the episode breaking down the mask vs mask match between El Grande Americano (Ludwig Kaiser) and The Original El Grande Americano (Chad Gable), which Kaiser won at AAA Noche de Los Grandes on May 30 at Arena Monterrey in Mexico. The bloody match, which ended with Gable unmasking in front of his family, has drawn near-universal acclaim, and WWE aired an encore presentation on Netflix immediately after Raw.

Romero set the tone, calling it “probably the best match of 2026” and saying it would “win most people’s match of the year.” He could not understand how WWE’s own Clash in Italy event the same weekend fell short of an AAA show with far fewer resources. “How can a WWE PLE not hold up to something from AAA with a much reduced budget,” he said, “but it’s just so much better in every single respect.” Of the WWE event, Romero added: “Clash in Italy was terrible. The booking was awful.”

For Richards, the match exposed how WWE builds its shows. “How can WWE get both these guys so wrong in so many different ways, or at least not have them live up to their potential on the main roster,” he asked. He credited AAA’s approach, which he attributed to reported booker The Undertaker, comparing it to the simple, story-first style of Dutch Mantell. “It wasn’t a match looking for a storyline, it was a storyline that led up to a match,” Richards said. “WWE does it all backwards. This is proof of how WWE has it all incredibly backwards in the wrong way. You should be able to do this every single week on WWE TV.”

Richards on The Undertaker’s booking: “He might be Booker of the Year if this continues,” he said. “Maybe not according to somebody who votes for Booker of the Year, but I would give him Booker of the Year at this point.”

Richards agreed with Romero’s description of the product as “soulless.” “This is a corporation we’re watching, everything is done in excess and not efficiently,” Richards said, arguing that creative meetings revolve around fitting in sponsors rather than telling stories. He called the company “creatively bankrupt and have been for a long time, not because you can’t create, it’s because all these other masters that Triple H is serving.” When Romero said WWE had “created a system that sucks the creativity out the process,” Richards agreed: “It’s an advertising system with some creative control.”

Both men also went out of their way to praise Gable and Kaiser. Romero made the boldest declaration of the night: “I think Chad Gable is the best wrestler in the world, and I don’t think it’s close.” Richards, noting AAA commentator and WWE Hall of Famer JBL had compared Gable to Kurt Angle, went a step further. While Angle was pushed by the company, Richards pointed out that “Chad’s getting over when they essentially have not pushed Chad,” and concluded that Gable “might be more versatile than Kurt.”

Richards also tipped his cap to AAA’s on-screen general manager. “Rey Mysterio has better business sense than TKO,” he said. “He can read the world and the audience better than they can.”

The praise came with a worry that WWE will undo it all once Gable and Kaiser are back on the main roster full time. “How long before they’ve ruined them,” Richards asked repeatedly. Romero shared the concern. “My worry was, is that WWE would see how well they were doing and want to bring them back, and then have no idea what to do with them,” he said. Richards framed the AAA run as a statement from both performers: “This was the prove it storyline for Kaiser and Chad Gable.”

Richards pointed to LA Knight as a cautionary tale of WWE mishandling a hot act. Noting that Knight had not wrestled on Raw since before WrestleMania and had been kept to backstage segments, Richards insisted “this can’t be by accident,” and said the company “haven’t handled his character with care.” Romero panned a recent in-ring segment with Jimmy Uso as “10 minutes of silence” that was “terrible,” calling a potential Knight versus Uso feud “a huge step down.”