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Ricky Starks made his AEW debut this past August, answering an open challenge from TNT Champion Cody Rhodes. Following his match, he was contract by Tony Khan, and also received a call from WWE.
In a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet, Starks stated he got a phone call from someone in WWE the day he made his AEW debut.
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.
Starks also spoke about receiving a WWE tryout in 2017, and why he believes he wasn’t hired. He feels WWE didn’t “want a wrestler”, despite head trainer Matt Bloom praising him.
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 died 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.
Check out the full interview below, where he discusses several different topics including his time in NWA, the appearances he made for WWE, and being compared to The Rock.