No One Wins Amid Ricky Starks, AEW Contract Drama
Yesterday at 02:56 PM
Nearly nine months ago Ricky Starks wrestled his last match in AEW against Top Flight.
Throughout that nine months Starks and fans alike have not received anything close to an explanation as to why he has not been on TV. There are rumours and countless pieces of speculation detailing what might be the reason, but hardly any of it is concrete and could never be unless it came from Starks himself or if Tony Khan actually gave a non-sterilized, non-PR answer to the question when it’s asked.
There’s now another wrinkle to the story following his removal from scheduled GCW appearances.
Starks had recently resurfaced in GCW and was set to compete in a series of matches for the company, however late Tuesday night the organization had been informed that AEW was pulling him from all appearances.
GCW’s statement on Twitter/X didn’t dive into details other than informing fans of the situation.
"We have just been informed that Ricky Starks has been pulled from all upcoming GCW appearances including his announced match on 12/14 in Los Angeles, his unannounced match on 12/28 in Seattle and his unannounced match on 1/19 at The Hammerstein Ballroom."
Oddities such as this have become commonplace over the last year where it concerns AEW and its wayward star. Fightful also reported recently that not only was Starks backstage at Full Gear this past weekend, but that the company apparently also exercised its option to extend Starks’ AEW contract into 2025. Furthermore, GCW owner Brett Lauderdale released his own statement following the untimely request from Starks’ current home promotion.
It’s a weird situation because Ricky Starks is an independent contractor. This is a whole wrestling conversation that, one of these days, this is going to be tested and something is going to happen because theoretically an independent contractor is independent and they can go and work wherever they want. In wrestling, these independent contractors don’t seem to be very independent. They are at the whim of an employer, which makes it seem like they are an employee. It’s above our pay grade. I’m just an indie wrestling company and I don’t have people under contract. These guys reach out to me. I like working with talented people and I don’t really get into their contract situation. If they make it to the point where they can appear on my show, I am to assume that everything is cleared. People don’t traditionally breach contracts on this level of wrestling.” – Fightful
Continuing on:
“I found out about this the same time as everybody else did, for the most part. I’ve stated this many times before and it’s no secret. I don’t really have a line of communication with AEW. I’ve never talked to Tony Khan on the phone or via text in my entire life. They don’t talk to me. I’m not trying to say that in a negative context, but I guess we’ve never really had to talk. Anybody from AEW who has worked with us, that’s been between me and the talent to arrange it. If they need to get permission or something, they handle that on their own. In terms of this with Ricky Starks or anybody else from AEW, I don’t really know a lot. I haven’t heard about anybody else. I’m just hearing Ricky has been pulled. Period. I haven’t been on the phone with AEW where they’ve given me an explanation or asked me any questions or anything. I have no communication with AEW over this. I don’t know where it goes beyond Ricky Starks.
…
I’ve always considered GCW and AEW to be on the same team. Is this meant to punish Ricky Starks? Is this meant to punish GCW? Is it somewhere in between? I just don’t know because I don’t have that line of communication. It doesn’t feel great. I would love to know if there’s something to be done or something we can be doing. We got to the point where this stuff was agreed upon, announced, and fans were looking forward to this. To promote something and have to pull it back is not ideal.”
With Starks and Lauderdale in the dark, Khan is the only one who can answer questions surrounding the former’s status, and that’s clarity he has not been willing to offer for most of the year. Beyond that, any reason we can conjure up is pure hyperbole without a foundation, which leaves us to perceive AEW being cast similarly to how iron fisted WWE had been with talent contracts for so long. Further to that if AEW picking up his contract option for another year in addition to keeping him off TV has anything to do with him potentially being WWE-bound once his deal is up, this is potentially petty on par with peak Vince-led WWE. There still isn’t much clarity with the situation and nothing really adds up. I think we’d be remiss to not at least acknowledge there might be a grain of truth to AEW’s side of the story, but the truth of the matter is we don’t know. Neither side is saying anything substantial and the end result is AEW, Starks, and our time as fans being wasted when what serves all parties best is to sever ties if there are no plans to bring Starks back to TV regardless of the reality of the situation.
What is apparent however is that the more Starks sits at home the less enviable fans’ perception of AEW becomes. Since I would imagine most would side with the talent in a scenario like this, there’s no other way to look at the optics of the ordeal than as perceiving Khan’s professional actions and overall treatment of some talent as being at least in the conversation of Vince McMahon’s lack of care toward (some of) their wrestlers. And then if the reports are accurate, on top of simply not using Starks at all, there’s the added point of the needless contract extension into next year.
There are other examples that make less sense in terms of why certain wrestlers are absent, but with even less substance to go on the only conclusion that can be reasonably drawn up with Starks is that the relationship between he and the company is frayed with Starks probably on the way out and toward WWE when his deal is up, and that moreover Khan is holding him off TV for that reason. There’s otherwise no right-thinking reason as to why a healthy 34-year-old wrestler has been off TV since March with no creative plans to speak of in the immediate future.
The sequence of events when you think about them are absurd. Not only did Khan then keep Starks off television from March into the spring heading into his deal’s conclusion, but he then reportedly extended that deal when he presumably picked up a company option on Starks’ contract — essentially paying him to stay home, and now with the cancellation of his GCW dates, pulling him from events meant to showcase himself without explanation. It’s a waste of money, a waste of talent and a waste of our collective time.
We long criticized WWE for holding talent to their deals when they wanted out, with denied release requests being far too common over the last decade when talent felt they weren’t being utilized in WWE. And it was especially fair criticism with the rise of AEW because the company had legit competition talent could jump to and sign a good contract with. Someone like Mustafa Ali, or FTR at the time were great examples. We need to keep the same energy here because the conditions are no different and the context is no less wrong than when WWE did the exact same thing.
Wrestlers are like any other athlete, and while some can prolong their careers beyond conventional reasons, most careers are nasty, brutish and short with the damage they do to their bodies. They only have so much time, time which shouldn’t be wasted as it isn’t frivolous. Whether Starks is being paid to sit at home isn’t the point, nor was it the point when WWE did it. Both companies were and are in the wrong. Although we don’t have any concrete details, the wrestlers should always have our support as they deserve the right and ability to work as they see fit, and in this particular situation potentially move on to a better fit like any of us would should we want to change jobs.
No one wins in this scenario, not Starks who is unable to wrestle, nor Khan who is more or less throwing money by not using Starks after extending his contract in addition to rightfully being cast negatively for how he’s mishandling another talent situation. The ideal scenario is that Starks simply comes back to work and whatever issues there are get ironed out, however that appears less likely now than ever before.
Starks is losing a chunk of his career, Khan is losing money on the deal in addition to what I feel is a negative perception cast on him, and in the middle of them are the fans who simply want to see one of the best, absolutely untapped wrestlers work.
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