AEW star Ricky Starks has been off television for two months. It looked like he suffered an injury the last time he wrestled on the March 30 episode of Collision, but Ricky has since said he’s fine and has no clue why he’s not being featured on AEW programming.
With Ricky’s mysterious absence in mind, CBS Sports’ Shakiel Mahjouri point-blank asked AEW President Tony Khan if there are any creative plans for Starks right now. Here is the actual answer that came out of Tony’s mouth:
“I really really like Ricky Starks a lot. The last time we saw him here was in the world tag team championship tournament. He and Big Bill formed a great team. They were the world tag team champions. They had a great run, and it culminated in the last televised match of the legendary career of The Icon, Sting.
I think it was a huge thing that Ricky and Bill, that their run culminated in such an important match in Phoenix, defending the world tag team championship against one of Ricky’s greatest rivals ever in AEW, Darby Allin. And someone else, Sting, when you think back, Ricky was part of Sting’s first match back in pro wrestling in many, many years. And that began a journey that went from Revolution ‘21 to Revolution ‘24. A three year journey.
We talked about five years of AEW, and maybe to me the most special part might have been that three year run of Sting, what we were able to do to give him, I thought, the greatest send off ever in wrestling. And Ricky’s a huge part of that, Sting’s first match and his last televised match. And Sting’s last ever title win. The last time Sting ever captured a title in pro wrestling.
These are all huge milestones, and Ricky’s a huge part of them. And that’s only scratching the surface of all the great things Ricky’s done here, and all the great matches he’s had, with so many opponents up and down the card since he arrived here.
I think Ricky Starks is tremendous. I’d love to get him involved and back in AEW any time. He’s been a huge part of what we’ve done here, for about four out of the five years. Tons of respect for [Ricky].”
After rambling on for a while about things that are not relevant to the question at hand, Tony finally gets around to almost answering the question in that final paragraph, where he implies Ricky is not in the mix right now but he’d love to get him back.
Ultimately, I’m having a hard time reconciling Khan’s claim that he would love for Ricky to be back in AEW with Ricky’s claim that he has no clue why he’s not on AEW TV.
Can you please make sense of this for me, Cagesiders?
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