Effy Reflects on Past AEW & Ricky Saints Incident, Criticizes Major Companies for Bad TV Products

During a recent interview with Fightful Overbooked’s Jeremy Lambert and SP3, prolific indie wrestler Effy spoke about a past incident involving AEW and Ricky Saints (formerly Ricky Starks). Fans might recall AEW pulling Saints from some scheduled GCW appearances in November 2024.

AEW reportedly pulled Saints from his GCW dates due to comments Effy made regarding AEW owner Shahid Khan, the father of AEW President and CEO Tony Khan. The controversy stemmed from AEW booking events at the Hammerstein Ballroom, where GCW had also booked an event. Effy later took shots at AEW and the Khans, stating, “Brett [Lauderdale] doesn’t have a dad who pays him to stay away.”

When commenting on the situation, Effy took major wrestling companies with weekly TV to task, criticizing them for having a bad product, which he believes keeps fans away from discovering and investing in indie wrestling. Below are some highlights from Fightful:

Effy on the Past Controversy and Bad Wrestling on TV Keeping Fans Away From Indie Wrestling

“I think y’all — y’all being everyone. Not Tony Khan, not AEW. Y’all need to hang out with more gay people. The library is open, and reading is fundamental. When wrestling at its highest viewership is what people are going to get in front of them before they get to me, and you put out dog****, you are stopping people from getting deeper into wrestling. My goal is to never work for you; my goal is to make sure you don’t run away fans before they get to me. What we’re doing with a lot of wrestling is this same old ****. You have agents who were never over; they were never drawing money. They were there, they were competent, they were very good at the physical performance of professional wrestling. But you have a whole group of idiots on both sides that are not stars. They’ve never been stars. They’ve never drawn a house.

“If you’re good enough at wrestling, you get the **** out and retire. If you’re mid and you’re not great, you have to keep agenting for these guys who are waiting for your instructions and telling them, ‘Well, this worked in 1998’ or ‘This worked in 2007’ or ‘This worked in 2011’ instead of looking around in the actual room that you’re in and making new things happen or taking the risk to make new stars. I spoke my mind because I was frustrated. GCW was trying to do something very special, we had not run that building in three years.

“Before that, nobody else had ran that building in years. It did seem a little odd that they were going to run it for three days the month before. If I was in a big company and this little gay boy kept saying things that were affecting my business, whether it be about Ronda Rousey, whether it be something that goes down at a Big Gay Brunch, whether it be anything, it has to be extremely frustrating to know that you have to have meetings about me, but you can’t say anything to me.”

Effy also took a moment to look at the current standing of Ricky Saints, who is now signed to WWE.

“I’ll look at the current landscape and say this — Ricky Saints is a title-holding WWE superstar. Ricky Saints is on TV all the time, and that’s all I wanted in any of this. That wasn’t even the excuse given for the things out, but I’ve unfortunately had my hand at the scene of the crime when other people have gotten in trouble for things. It hasn’t been anything I’d tell you I disagree with; it hasn’t been anything that I’d tell you I should take my words back to help them. I’m sorry for causing anybody else any grief or any trouble in dealing with things, but I also am not gonna sit here and say that it makes sense and I should be quiet when someone like a Ricky Starks shouldn’t be on TV every week if you’re trying to draw more ratings and your ratings are down in the ****ing toilet. Obviously, your ratings in the toilet are still higher than the ratings I’m getting; I understand that. To see somebody with a pot of gold that’s running down the street and all of the gold is falling out and you’re going, ‘Hey, are you going to pick up this gold?’ and they get mad about it, it’s very confusing.”

On Wanting AEW To Fix Its Bad Habits

“I just want to say, here I am still today. We’re removed from the situation; we’re a lot later in the year. Two years. I’d be so mad that you can’t get rid of me; I’d be so mad that my press is going up. I’d be so mad that the book world is about to be talking about Effy. I’d be so mad that instead of speaking to Effy, even under the table where I could call you and say, this makes no sense or this is dogshit or why aren’t you using this person or what the hell are we doing here, you instead say, well, he said something mean to me; we have to try to destroy him. Now, I’m gonna make sure I’m not helping anybody in those situations. I wish you the best, I hope you’re great, but if y’all would hang out with a few more catty gay people, you would understand that when I’m being shady and when I’m bringing up things that you have fallen short on or when I’m bringing up things that I don’t like, it’s with the intention of them changing.

“It is not with the intention of shaming you or putting you down forever; it’s the hopes that you’ll let Ricky be on TV. It’s the hopes that you’ll treat Sonny Kiss like a real person. It’s the hopes that you won’t try to get somebody out the door and make them cry because they were doing a match with me. It’s the hopes that you’ll correct your behavior through this shady love rather than me having to hold your hand. I don’t work for you; I don’t have a meeting with you. But hearing from people all around that are going, ‘It took me five weeks to get a conversation with Tony’ or ‘It took me four weeks to even talk with him’ or ‘He would kind of run away from the conversation when things would come up.”

“This isn’t how we make a business operate. I’m not there, so I don’t know, and I don’t want to be there, so I don’t care, but it is sad to see that instead of just correcting and doing better, you go, well, we’ll just punish this guy who doesn’t work for us and doesn’t have anything to do with us. Look where we are now.”

On Being Open To Have a Conversation With Tony Khan

“Yeah, no, 100%. I think that [the Shad Khan clip] was used as a scapegoat because that clip on TikTok had about 2800 views, which, you know, is not a ton on TikTok. I’ve been blacklisted on TikTok in a lot of ways, I’ve moved to Instagram because TikTok does not want to hear anything about gay people, they don’t want to hear about queer culture. The conversation has always been open to have that conversation, but I need him to understand that I’m not saying anything false, right? There wasn’t a big group of interviews, and he came out on top of the interviews to be the best for the job. Every job he’s had is because this person has been his father. Me saying that, it might piss you off, but nobody else in the room is going, ‘No, he actually interviewed anonymously against 30 other candidates and he came out on top.’

“No. To take that personally instead of going, ‘Hey, I didn’t like the way that made me feel.’ I don’t know; it is what it is. But I’m not a person who has connections to get a job like that without ever doing an interview. What do I know about running a soccer team? What the hell do I know about helping the marketing of the Jacksonville Jaguars? I don’t know these things, that wouldn’t be the job for me. If they want to take it personally instead, they can take it personally but if I’m in a business that’s not doing what I think it should do and someone has some rude suggestions, I’m probably not going to listen to them either.

“I don’t blame them for this, but it is frustrating when wrestling gets the chance to have a bigger platform or to push itself higher; our personal choices are what messes things up. You hear about people in the past not getting a push because someone didn’t like him or someone pissing someone off because they were hitting on their girlfriend, and they don’t get a push. For the wrestling fans, I’d be extremely frustrated if other people’s personal problems were stopping the product for being better just so you could prove a point, just so you could make things seem like they’re good for you.”

On Not Wanting Bad Wrestling TV To Stop People From Discovering or Investing in Indie Wrestling

“Here’s the thing, are we going to do business? Probably not. Should we? Would it benefit him? I don’t know. I don’t ever want Effy to be on your TV show; I just want to say that. I don’t need Effy on your TV show. But I would prefer if your TV show didn’t stop people from finding Effy because if they’re tuning into a lot of it — I watched SmackDown last week, holy ****. The wrestling was bad, the show was bad, the promos were bad. Everybody hit their marks; everybody knew their entrance pose. But everything was exactly the script, and the wrestling that I like is, we don’t know what’s going to happen here. We don’t know what’s going to happen when these guys get out here. There’s a little of that with some of the hardcore guys, but you can’t have Jon Moxley being the only one who’s going against the grain on things.”

Ricky Saints would leave AEW a few months later, debuting in WWE NXT at NXT Arrival in February 2025. Brett Lauderdale, addressing Effy’s comments in a later interview with Game Changer Weekly, said, “What Effy says is Effy’s opinion. He is an independent wrestler, an independent contractor. He says this stuff on his own personal podcast, which is not endorsed, amplified, or promoted by GCW. He is his own guy.”