Ricky Starks Talks Decision To Leave NWA, Says He Wasn’t A Fan Of The Carnyland Concept, Whether He Needs To Win A Title and more

AEW star Ricky Starks was a recent guest on the Wrestling Perspective podcast to discuss a number of different subjects, including his decision to leave the NWA back in 2020 and why he wasn’t a fan of the promotion’s new Carnyland concept. Highlights from the interview can be found below.

Why he decided to leave NWA:

The NWA contract came up and it was pretty much like they were gonna renew it but the pandemic just happened and they were gonna go start doing this thing called Carnyland, which to me, I thought was corny. I thought it was the worst idea imaginable and on top of that too, they cut my pay and I was already struggling to make ends meet. So, I said, ‘I’m done. I’m not gonna renew’ and they weren’t happy about it but it was what it was. So I took a chance in saying like, ‘Well, I’ll just keep busting my ass and make things — and figure it out. Everything just works itself out.’ I had been through enough in life with sleeping in my car and being homeless and not being able to eat that I stopped stressing about it.

Says he doesn’t need to win a championship to still be remembered:

I [got] this question a bit before and I’ve actually thought about it, and just so we’re clear, when I’m speaking, I don’t care to speak [as] if I have an ego or if people think I have an ego. I’m just speaking because we’re all just comfortable in this setting. I don’t think that I necessarily need a title and the reason I say that is because I don’t wanna have to pigeonhole myself to actually accomplishing that. If I went my whole career without winning a title, I think I would be okay because there’s other things that I can do that would make people forget about it, right? Entertaining, being a good wrestler, being a good talker, things like that. Would I love to have a title? I think that’d be cool, yeah for sure. But do I need one? Not necessarily. I think I would make a title if anything. I don’t think the title would make me.

Says he enjoys working with the AEW production team:

The producers do like working with me because I do know where each camera is almost at every time and I love the hard cam so it makes Tim [Walbert], the producer, Tim and [another TV producer], their jobs way easier and they don’t have to keep switching everywhere.

(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)