March 3, 2024 was the last time “Ricky Starks” appeared on television for AEW. That night in London, Ontario, Canada, he and Big Bill put over Top Flight in the quarter final rounds of the AEW tag team title tournament. After that it would have been nearly “out of sight, out of mind” if not for fans of all stripes asking the question of his standing with AEW at every opportunity.
We will likely never know the exact reason why AEW kept him off television. We can presume there was truth behind his rumoured desire to join WWE considering how quickly his debut came together, and even that is conjecture mired in relativity and circumstance. Who knows for certain, and does it even matter anymore? What is of consequence though is the reality that someone as talented as Starks was off AEW TV without explanation for nearly a year.
Since his last AEW match he managed to stay busy, doing the media rounds while committing to indie dates since the end of November. He even picked up the Defy world title from Kenta just head of his NXT debut. Hopefully he’s allowed to do the right thing and defend it.
I’ve been a fan of Starks from the moment I found him on NWA Powerrr. He’s solid on promos with a Rock-like tone that blends trash talk with punchlines delivered with the bravado of someone with a superiority complex. His confident character work complements that. He works a higher impact, safe style that looks good. I really don’t think I’ve seen him have a truly bad match.
All of that being understood, he stagnated in environments where he either outgrew the platform he was on, or his style didn’t mesh with a company like AEW that is much more focused on in-ring work. He was certainly the victim of circumstance where his program with CM Punk is concerned. One thing we should talk about with clarity is that it’s clear that up to a point he seemingly tried and was central to a number of stories during his AEW run, but nothing really exploded for him. That reasoning is open to interpretation.
You can argue AEW undervalued him. It can be argued he didn’t evolve his style and relied too much on his persona; but there’s also nothing terribly broken in his work. You can maybe even argue he overvalued himself and made his intention to head to WWE too obvious. There’s degrees of truth and conjecture in all of it. It’s also clear communication between he and AEW tanked after a point resulting in so much confusion throughout 2024. Whatever the reason, even if you’re not a devout “Starks” fan I’m not sure you can say he shouldn’t be a valued person on any roster. I would think most would want to see what he can do with consistent opportunities, because we presumably would also want that for ourselves. There’s an element of identifiability in that reality.
The Ups and Downs of His AEW Run
From the outset, I think if you were watching AEW when he contested Cody Rhodes’ TNT title during an open challenge series you probably at least had to acknowledge his potential based on his charisma and in-ring work. Even with that understanding, now with the benefit of hindsight it’s difficult to believably say his run was anything more than above average.
Aside from his TNT championship match, he joined Team Taz, held the FTW championship, won the Owen, was set to feud with CM Punk and helped book end Sting’s career in dropping the AEW tag championships to him and Darby Allin ahead of Sting’s retirement match (ironically he and Brian Cage were in his first AEW match). Other than a strap match with Bryan Danielson, which I would argue is his best AEW outing, what we have is a run that was a definite success. I would also argue it didn’t match up to what it could have been. That’s equally on him as much it is AEW.
The murkiness of his run makes it difficult to confidently say what we should expect of him now that he’s traded the stark contrast of AEW to WWE’s gold and black 3.0 incarnation. Throughout his AEW tenure the tone he set for himself was defined by his belief that he had untapped potential to accomplish much more than the fruits of his successes amounted to under Tony Khan. I remember one particular PPV where during the post-show presser with Khan beside him he said all he needs is the chance to show out and he will knock it out of the park.
We must ask the key questions though, such as why was he never considered for a TNT title run? How many more AEW world title matches should he have had? Swinging for the fences and succeeding in the mid-card is great, but given what he can do his tenure did not live up to his potential to break through. That’s something he believes he can manifest. However, I question whether or not bookers and fans have that same level of faith in him. He believes he can. I think he can, and maybe you do as well, but the proof is in the outputs and it’s something we’ve yet to see in bloom.
Potential and its realization are not guaranteed, and try as he might, objectively speaking his AEW run could have been characterized by something much more substantial. The whats and whys of how his run played out the way it did don’t matter, because our perception of his presentation defines the judgment of his work outside the bubble of WWE or AEW. I think that aspect is mostly positive.
As consumers of wrestling media that judgment is what matters because that determines his value and the opportunities that derive from his labours regardless of the company he works for. While I would argue that his potential to date is unfulfilled and his “revolution” has hardly been a stark contrast to the status quo, that doesn’t mean the moderate successes of his AEW run automatically determine the trajectory of what can happen in WWE. It’s another positive point to having multiple premier wrestling organizations; wrestlers have that opportunity to prove their worth. Now he can do that and prove himself right more so than proving anyone else wrong.
That success is not a guarantee. But now with his AEW run at an official end weeks after his arrival in NXT, the onus is on him to actually show out. He has the agency to make his projection of himself a reality. And if he fails to do that now, that’s on him. It works both ways. That being said, I think above all what we should expect is NXT to provide the rebranded Ricky Saints the platform he has desired for the last five years. That future is not set in stone, and there is no fate but what he makes for himself.
Those first steps he took in his first NXT match Tuesday night set the tone. What comes next is unclear, but I think it’s worth tuning in to find out what happens in his next act.
