Just a month removed from revealing he’d departed from the rebooted National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), former NWA World Television Champion Ricky Starks appeared on AEW Dynamite to answer Cody Rhodes‘ open challenge for the TNT Championship, All Elite Wrestling‘s latest championship belt.
Absolute @starkmanjones has ARRIVED and is ready to take your #TNTChampion @CodyRhodes to the limit!
Watch #AEWDynamite NOW on @TNTDrama or https://t.co/GdI7QAsxEP for our International fans. #AEWonTNT @AEWonTNT pic.twitter.com/yQ8i9Pz04q
— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) June 18, 2020
An early signee with the new NWA, Ricky Starks originally debuted with NWA at their 70th Anniversary Show PPV in the fall of 2018, officially signing in the summer of 2019. He was a regular star on their NWA Powerrr YouTube show and won the reactivated NWA World Television Championship this past January. He would lose the title in March.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQGbCsGhvHg
A pro wrestler since 2012, he worked his way through the US indies, finding his groove in the rich Texas scene with Anarchy Championship Wrestling (ACW) in October 2012, and by the following year was also working for Inspire Pro Wrestling and Lonestar Championship Wrestling (LCW) in the area. In 2017, he paired up with a California indie wrestler and Lance Storm trainee Aaron Solow to form Extra Talented, who has become one of the indie scene’s top tag teams. That year they captured the WrestleCircus Big Top Tag Team Champions, defeating The Rascalz (Dezmond Xavier & Zachary Wentz). The tandem made their UK debut that same year, working for a multitude of the UK’s top indie promotions, including PROGRESS, Over The Top (OTT) Wrestling, Southside Wrestling Entertainment (SWE), Fight Club: PRO and ATTACK! They also made their Bar Wrestling debut that November in one of Candice LeRae‘s last matches in The World’s Cutest Tag Team with Joey Ryan. He also won the ACW Television Championship and held it an astounding 651 days. He became one of the top prospects in the US indies.
From his travels in the Texas circuit, Starks formed a deep friendship with AEW’s Sammy Guevara and now he’s joined his friend in appearing for AEW on AEW Dynamite, although we may have to wait a bit to find out if Starks is just one of the indie stars brought in for the open challenge or if Starks will truly be All Elite.
Stay tuned to the Last Word on Pro Wrestling for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world. You can catch AEW Dynamite Wednesday nights at 8PM ET on TNT and AEW DARK Tuesday nights at 7 PM ET on YouTube.
