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AEW’s Ricky Starks ignited MJF chance with off-the-cuff promo: ‘I’ll dog walk him’

Posted: Dec 14th 2022 By: Joseph Stazewski

In the middle of the biggest moment and opportunity in his career so far, Ricky Starks said ‘f—k it.”

The All Elite Wrestling star had journaled ideas throughout the day last Wednesday about what he was going to say to the promotion’s world champion Maxwell Jacob Friedman – also one of the hottest acts in the entire business right now – when he was standing across the ring from him. For some reason Starks tried to memorize it – something he never does.

That all changed after Starks won the Dynamite Diamond Ring battle royal and was listening to MJF’s side of their promo battle to set up their match for his championship and the ring at “AEW Dynamite: Winter is Coming” on Wednesday (8 p.m., TBS). Instead, Starks chose to go off the cuff and “stand up” to Friedman instead of going with the more traditional-style angle “you’re supposed to do,” and that he had planned.

“I just said, ‘f—k it’ and I winged it and just spoke from my heart of what I feel,” Starks said in a phone interview. “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.’”

What followed was an approximately four-and-half-minute verbal undressing of Friedman like we haven’t seen before, from calling him “Maxi Pad,” making fun of his uneven spray tan and clothes, and also chiding him for not embracing the fans who wanted to cheer him. Starks dove into his own career struggles, dependability and the idea he deserves to be champion more. He fully believes he can stand toe-to-toe with the best of the best in AEW in Friedman, Kenny Omega, Jon Moxley and others. At that moment he got to prove it.

“This is another example of how crazy I am,” Starks said. “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.’” 

What the world heard Wednesday was “completely left field” from what Starks has written down. He originally was going to talk about how MJF’s behavior has affected the company and how Max’s behavior during the summer isn’t talked about in the terms of what a real champion is. Starks did touch on it a little bit, saying he goes to all his signings and meet and greets, unlike Friedman, who blew one off before Double or Nothing in May to ignite a work/shoot contract dispute with AEW president Tony Khan and a three-month absence from the company.

Starks, 32, admitted he didn’t expect the level of reaction his promo received. It and the segment as a whole were universally praised and the video received 600,000 views on Twitter. He didn’t see it as a star-making moment, but just him doing what he’s done over the past two years. He doesn’t plan on stopping making moments like that.

“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 spoke,” 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.”

Starks being injected into the main event scene has been something the AEW audience has been pushing for and he feels like he’s “been deserving of the same things other people have there.” He saw his performance Wednesday and a chance to say, “don’t forget” about me and that he can go up against MJF and actually succeed and prove what he’s been talking about right.

“It’s a great feeling especially with the fans, having that support, really carrying me on and being like, ‘yo what are y’all doing? What’s going on with Ricky?’” Starks said.

However, he isn’t jealous that MJF has climbed that mountain before him and stops himself from being angry or thinking about what he’d do if he was in that position. Starks is just fine being parallel to Friedman and making his lane as successful as possible.

“Up on the track if you stand me next to Max I can easily outrun him,” Starks said. “I’ll dog walk him all the way through and I’ve proven that.”

He had spent most of his time in AEW as a member of the heel faction Team Taz along with Will Hobbs, Brian Cage and Hook, but never felt that “anyone really hated me” in the audience and if they did he was “oblivious to it.” He formed a real-life friendship with Hobbs as the two leaned on each other early on to “kind of figure out our own way because we didn’t really have a clue.”

Starks couldn’t exactly pinpoint when the crowds started to really support him but put it around his Feb. 2 match on “Rampage” against Jay Lethal for the FTW championship. Then in one segment on the July 27 Dynamite, Team Taz went their separate ways as Starks turned full babyface after dropping the FTW title to Hook and was then betrayed by Hobbs. Being the good guy now comes with responsibilities he believes Friedman – who went back to being heel despite getting cheers in the leadup to becoming champion – is afraid of taking on.

“It’s easier for Max to be lazy,” said Starks, 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.” 

Starks, who began wrestling in 2012, certainly didn’t take the easier way to this moment. While working on the independent scene, he appeared as an enhancement talent numerous times for WWE from 2012-18, even having a tag match along with Aaron Solo against FTR, getting slammed through a table by Ryback and getting to handcuff Roman Reigns during a segment in which he was a marshal.

He said in late 2014 he was sleeping on a mattress on the floor in St. Louis before moving back to Austin, Texas, where he was living out of his car and couch-surfing for a period of time. Starks was also forced to couch-surf for a few months prior to signing with the NWA in the summer of 2019 before getting his own place. He says he usually doesn’t talk about that stuff because he hates “when people romanticize struggles.”

“I think it feels like I’m supposed to do that,” Starks said. “I’m supposed to go through those things and be featured in that light just to be in this moment. It is cool, but I don’t think I always look back on my past as I should because I’m always focused on what’s next.” 

That just happened to be a chance for him to strip MJF of everything he’s won in AEW, the world championship, his Dynamite Diamond ring, and making him “start from zero.” It would also in Starks’ mind reinforce his claims and the belief of the audience that’s pushed him to this point.

“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.’”