AEW star Ricky Starks recently spoke to TSN to discuss his time with the National Wrestling Alliance, where he was a former television champion. Starks adds that he was planning on departing the NWA even prior to the pandemic, and explains what led him to that decision. Highlights are below.
I didn’t plan to stay there for a long time. I gave myself a six-month or eight-month plan to really stay and then use that as a jumping-off point for me to get things going. I wasn’t getting paid a lot in NWA, so I was barely making it by off the salary that I was on. On top of that, once the pandemic hit and they weren’t really trying to increase my pay, they were going with a new TV show called Carnyland that I didn’t necessarily agree with. That was really just the writing on the wall for me to step away from it and try something else. It was a bit scary to try something else, especially because of the fact that we just started in the pandemic, so the timing [wasn’t great.]