Ricky Starks Says WWE Contacted Him The Same Day As His AEW Dynamite Debut
Photo Credit: AEW
Ricky Starks recently spoke with Chris Van Vliet about his career highlights, which include being signed by AEW this summer. Starks made a great impression as a mystery competitor in a TNT Championship match against Cody Rhodes, and has now revealed that WWE reached out to him the same day as the match to bring him in.
“The funny thing is, the day that I wrestled Cody I got a phone call from WWE saying ‘Hey, we’ve been watching you and we wanted to bring you in’. I said ‘Oh really? oh ok. Interesting. Of all days’. And so I entertained that conversation because I was curious but I think I knew already which decision I was going to make. And I had a very dear, great friend tell me once: you should look at the people who want to invest in you and not know anything about you as opposed to the people who only wanted you when they saw someone else having interest. So that put things in perspective and I don’t hold any ill will towards WWE but I really think they dropped the ball majorly on that. I’ll never know why and I guess I don’t care now.”
Tony Khan later said he legitimately signed Starks after the match due to his impressive performance and his TNT Championship match was only meant to be a one-time deal. Starks also had a WWE tryout in 2017, but doesn’t think he was all that close to getting hired back then.
“I don’t think I was close at all and I’ll never understand why. I love wrestling. I’ve never played any sports, I never did anything, I only watched wrestling. And I have immersed myself and become obsessed with it and I love it to death. So when I did the tryout in 2017 and I was told and saw the reaction when I killed it in the promo class and I was keeping up with everybody when we were doing the workouts and even Matt Bloom was saying how good of a job I did, I realized that they didn’t want a wrestler. They wanted someone who wasn’t passionate about it that they could probably make into it. And I still don’t get why and that was a time period where I kind of went crazy; I dyed my hair and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. So I don’t know why that happened and I thought every time that I went to WWE I was like ‘This is going to be it. This is how I get in’ and it wasn’t and that’s fine. I’m ok with that.”
Read More: Darby Allin Wants Long-Term Feuds, Doesn’t Plan To Give Out Random Title Shots