Ricky Saints is taking a measured look back at his career so far, offering an honest assessment of his time in both AEW and WWE NXT.
After spending just over a year in NXT, where he’s already captured both the NXT North American Championship and the NXT Championship, Saints reflected on how that run stacks up against his previous stint as Ricky Starks in AEW, which included a reign as AEW Tag Team Champion.
Speaking with David Shoemaker and Kazeem Famiyude of The Ringer (see video below), Saints was asked to compare the two chapters of his career and assign each a grade.
“That’s hard,” he admitted. “I loved my run at AEW for all (television) stuff. You can say what you want about the other stuff. If you look at it in totality, I did enjoy it, I just wanted more out of it. I think I would give it a B.”
A fair but telling score.
Saints went on to explain that separating personal expectations from actual output played a key role in how he evaluated his time in AEW.
“I have to remove certain personal things of accomplishments that I wanted that I didn’t necessarily get. I have to remove that. I have to look at what the actual work was. What was actually done.”
When it comes to his current NXT run, however, Saints feels he’s edging even closer to top marks.
“When compared to NXT, I would give my NXT run a B+. We’re edging out an A.”
