AEW’s “The Rock” Ricky Starks Reveals Why he Turned Down the Offer from WWE

Ricky Starks caught the attention of AEW when he answered Cody Rhodes’ open challenge for the TNT Championship. It was good enough for him to earn a contract with the company, even though he lost the match.

Interestingly, the day he wrestled Cody Rhodes on AEW Dynamite (June 17th), WWE called him to offer him a contract. Starks declined the offer.

Starks recently appeared as a guest on the Chris Van Vliet Show. During this interview, he revealed why he did not choose WWE over AEW even though both companies showed interest in him.

According to him, he did not want to sign with a company that was only interested since another company showed interest.

“The funny thing is, the day that I wrestled Cody I got a phone call from WWE saying ‘Hey, we’ve been watching you and we wanted to bring you in’. I said ‘Oh really? oh ok. Interesting. Of all days’. And so I entertained that conversation because I was curious. But I think I knew already which decision I was going to make.”

The Rock of AEW reveals who helped him decide

Ricky Starks followed the words of his friend and sign with a company who gave him a platform first.

To be fair, WWE had the chance to sign Starks when he was doing extra work for the company while making a name in the independent wrestling scene.

“I had a very dear, great friend tell me once: you should look at the people who want to invest in you and not know anything about you as opposed to the people who only wanted you when they saw someone else having interest. So that put things in perspective and I don’t hold any ill will towards WWE but I really think they dropped the ball majorly on that. I’ll never know why and I guess I don’t care now.”

Currently, Ricky Starks is a full time pro-wrestler on AEW. He joined Team Taz alongside Will Hobbs and Brian Cage. As of now, he ranks 5th in the men’s rankings.

He performed at the latest episode of Dynamite with Brian Cage against Darby Allin and Cody Rhodes.