Ricky Starks delivered the promo of a lifetime last week on AEW Dynamite against MJF, and he’s now revealing that he winged the entire thing.
Ahead of AEW Dynamite: Winter is Coming, Ricky Starks sat down with Joseph Staszewski of the New York Post to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When asked about his excellent promo against MJF last week on Dynamite, Stakrs revealed what he originally planned to say was thrown out the window in the moment, and he winged the promo on the fly.
“I just said, ‘f—k it’ and I winged it and just spoke from my heart of what I feel,” Ricky Starks. “Obviously, you can hear it in my voice. Like, ‘Hey I’m dead serious about wrestling. I’m dead serious about who I am and what my worth is.’ This is another example of how crazy I am. I knew in that moment that I had to win against him and yet for some reason, I decided to just wing it. I decided to take a gamble and say, ‘Alright bro, if you believe so strongly in your talent, just test yourself and see.’”
When asked if he felt this promo was a star-making performance for him, Starks said it just came down to speaking from the heart.
“Even if this was a star-making performance in other people’s eyes, to me this was another situation – the third time now if you look at my AEW career – where I’ve gone out there and I’ve passionately spoken,” Ricky Starks said. “In an industry and in a company where there are so many cornballs and disingenuous people who are all about taglines and trying to push merch, I go out there and speak from the heart and I speak what I feel.”
Ricky Starks has gotten very comfortable in the babyface role in recent months, and it’s something he takes very seriously because he has people who look up to him.
“It’s easier for Max to be lazy,” Ricky Starks said, who has been active with AEW’s community outreach initiatives. “It’s easier for Max in his current position to say, ‘I don’t have to go and visit the kid at the school because he asked me to.’ That’s different from me because I take that responsibility because that person is looking up to me.”
When asked about the possibility of winning the AEW World Championship at Winter is Coming, Starks said it would validate how he feels about himself and the fanbase’s current opinion of him.
“It would be great to burst the bubble of someone’s ego like that, obviously Max has a very paper-thin ego,” Starks said. “At the end of the day, me being AEW champion not only validates me and how I feel and what I believe in myself. But I also think it validates the fans’ opinion on who they see has the heart and talent and who they deem to be ‘the one.’”
READ MORE: Ricky Starks On MJF’s Fashion Sense: He Wears Ferragamo, But It’s Really Ferragodno
What do you make of Ricky Starks’ comments? Do you think he won the war of words with MJF on AEW Dynamite last week? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.