Ricky Starks calls the Undertaker his guy.
The AEW superstar spoke about the Deadman during his latest interview with The Wrestling Classic, where he revealed that his friendship with Taker goes deeper than most fans know about. The Absolute One also reveals that he helped train with Taker during the lead up to his WrestleMania 34 matchup with John Cena. That and more from the interview can be found below.
On his relationship with the Undertaker and how the Deadman is proud of him:
Taker’s like my guy. Taker’s my favorite wrestler of all time. The wildest thing is that as I got older, I actually met him. I had him watch one of my matches for the indies. I sparred with him in preparation for his match against John Cena at WrestleMania. I kept in touch with Taker still to this day when I see him, still the same, ‘Hey man, how you doing? I’m proud of you.’ That’s what he’s told me, he’s proud of me and I’m doing great so yeah, it’s really wild to go from that to sitting on a couch with [someone] that you loved when you were growing up.
How he learned to maximize his minutes while with Team Taz:
I learned how to maximize my minutes [as a part of Team Taz]. I learned that if I’m on-screen and I don’t get no promo time even though I can freaking talk, then I’m gonna maximize my minutes in the way that I see fit, in the way that I think is gonna be beneficial to me and if you notice, that is actually around the time where I came out dressed up. None of this is new. I always came out dressed up in knitted shirts and glasses and slacks and all this stuff. But, I maximized my minutes because of my presence and being there and you know, these small little [facial expressions], all that, you know what I’m saying? That is what I learned the most out of that group because at the time, it was me, Brian Cage and Taz. So three to start with and then [Powerhouse] Hobbs got at it. But around that period, it was just Taz really doing most of the talking and Taz would try to throw me a ball here and there but bro, then I only had 15 seconds, 20 seconds to talk and it used to drive me insane.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)