Ricky Starks was a coveted free agent the minute people heard he was leaving the NWA, but it didn’t last long as AEW snapped him up pretty quickly. He was one of the first people Cody Rhodes defended the TNT Championship against, and fans were buzzing the moment Starks made his Dynamite debut in the hopes he’d be announced as All Elite.
Speaking with the Wrestling Pespective Podcast, Starks talked about his goal to getting the shot and how quickly things came together between his shot and becoming a full fledged member of the AEW roster. Starks noted that he had very little connection to Rhodes or Tony Khan outside a brief hello one time when visiting friends, but he manifested his dreams into an opportunity.
“Then there was the Dynamite where Cody came out and he announced there was going to be an open challenge, and then he went on Twitter and said ‘oh no, this is open to everybody.’ I swear to God, the next day I was at the gym and this vision of me walking out and cutting this promo on Cody Rhodes before the match and having this match kept popping into my head for those few days. That Sunday, I got a call from AEW asking me if I was interested in coming in and doing a match with Cody. I was like, yeah for sure. I was like, what the hell is going on? I get there and theoretically I didn’t have a promo live in front of him but I wasn’t supposed to have a promo at all. I’d go and do some b-roll stuff on Tuesday and Wednesday and they chopped it up because the producer had liked it so much and he pitched it to Tony like, hey, maybe we do a promo package before he comes out. Dude, the promo package! I came out, I had an entrance and theme song.
I had the match. After the match was over I legit thought it was just like a one-off and said ‘well, at least I can raise my rate and go onto the indies, gain some more momentum, and then once the pandemic is over get back in touch AEW or WWE and see what’s happening.’ Sure enough, that Wednesday my match airs and I get a call from Tony and he offers me a job. It was the most insane thing that’s ever happened, just because it started up here [points to his head] and then just materialized so quick.”
Starks is sitting pretty as he’s a staple of AEW Dynamite and a member of Team Taz. He’ll have a chance to show just how big of a star he is at Revolution when he and Brian Cage meet Darby Allin and Sting in a Street Fight. You can watch the rest of the podcast below.
h/t to Fightful for the quote
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