Ricky Starks Recalls His Time Doing Extra Work For WWE, Says People Ask If He’s Retired

Ricky Starks recently discussed the period of his career when he was doing extra work for WWE and why he stepped away from such when he didn’t get signed in 2017. Starks was a guest on the Wrassle Rap Podcast and you can see some highlights below, per Wrestling Inc:

On people thinking he’s retired: “I got a lot of messages asking if I am retired, and that s**t is hurtful, dawg. That sucks to hear fans asking me if I am retired, you know, because they don’t see me enough. I don’t ever want the sun to go down on me in that sense, you know what I am saying? I like doing commentary on Rampage, but I don’t want people to forget that I am still active, I don’t want people to think that I am just some young retiree because I am doing commentary.”

On his time doing extra work for WWE: “I was doing extra work since like 2012. I don’t know which one it was, it had to be them seeing me so often that led to me getting that. But, I did extra work so many times to the point where I said, ‘there’s no point to me doing extra work anymore, because they’ve seen enough of me. If they like something, they would have signed me by now, so I am done with this extra work stuff.’ So, I had the tryout in 2017, I want to say I did one more extra work after that. And that’s when I was just like, ‘yeah, I am over it, I am not doing that anymore.’”

On being contacted by AEW for the TNT Championship Open Challenge: “It was someone else within the organization, I didn’t recognize the number. But they were just like, ‘hey, do you want to come do this match, blah, blah, blah, open challenge.’ I went there thinking that this was a one-and-done because it was during the pandemic. So, I didn’t think that they were signing anybody. Then after the match was done everyone was like, ‘it was good, good job,’ then the day that it aired that night I got signed. It’s incredible.”