Ricky Starks recently spoke about working with CM Punk in AEW last year being nixed while doing a recent interview with WhatCulture Wrestling.
Starks challenged CM Punk for the Real World Championship, with Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat serving as the special outside enforcer on an August episode of Collision.
Due to Punk’s firing because of the All In backstage altercation with Jack Perry just a week prior, it changed plans, with Starks ending up wrestling Bryan Danielson at All Out instead. Here are the highlights:
On not getting the Punk match:
“Well, you know, it was weird. It was a weird setup from the month prior. Because I wasn’t at All In. And I had done that whole thing during the summer. And, like the fans were still behind me after whipping Steamboat. And it was just, it was a crazy turn of events, that looking back on it, I’m just like, Damn, if I could bottle it up being put in my pocket, I would. Obviously, I was frustrated. I was definitely frustrated because I must have done something bad in my past life. Because I just feel like I don’t want to say it’s bad luck. But man, I just tough breaks after breaks, you know, I’m saying that’s just what it feels like. And I guess I don’t really give it too much thought about it. And I just put my head down and just keep working. But you know, when I have conversations with people, and they bring that up, and they say like, ‘Well, you did this, and then this.’ It’s like, ‘Shit’. Yeah, when you really put it like that. It has seemingly been just a series of unfortunate events here, though. So I was definitely frustrated about the whole situation. I was aggravated because, you know, I’ve worked hard, and I do these things. And you know, I feel like I’ve proven it. Sometimes I feel like, ‘Well, you haven’t proven it’. And then I have someone tell me, ‘Well, you did approve it.’ And then I go, ‘Well, I still need to keep proving it’. And then at a certain point, I think what’s gonna happen, it’s like, how many more times do I have to do that? Right. So I wish it didn’t happen like that, it would have been interesting to see how the Punk match would have turned out in that environment. But obviously, it’s still in my head. I think it was gonna have a great match with anyone regardless because of just my mindset. Yeah, it just, it sucks. It really does suck. Like, there’s no, there’s nothing about it. It sucks because a lot of things were affected afterward. And, you know, some people got back on the train tracks, and some people did not.”
On early episodes of AEW Collision when CM Punk was still around: “It was great.……..Obviously, you can see those Collisions were building up the guys who didn’t have a chance on Dynamite, so to speak. And it really was beneficial to a lot of guys. Obviously, things have changed a bit now. But for the most part, I thought those early Collisions for a new show trying to figure it out and highlight these guys. It was fantastic. It was great. You had great matches that came out of it. You still have great matches on Collision, and you’re still going to have a great show. But it just had a different feeling to it.”
On Punk’s influence on Collision:
“Punk was very instrumental in my presentation on Collision, there’s a video clip that constantly gets reshared, where the pyro going off and exploding and blah, blah. That was all Punk’s idea. Punk had had a vision for trying to help out certain people. And getting along. And I do remember a conversation with him where he was like, ‘You know, it’s really up to you to swim, sink or swim.’ And I felt like I put a lot of stress on myself and pressure on myself to constantly outperform my last match that I had just to prove that if he was going to, you know, put his name on me, so to speak, or be the one to push for me that I needed to do my part and make sure I never let that down. And it was the same thing. When I had the tag match with The Bucks, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t let The Bucks down, or with Sting like it’s those things. Punk was very instrumental in making sure like, ‘Hey, we should try to do something different with this dude. And I think Punk is the only one that was closest to really understanding me in that regard.”
On having no issues with Punk:
“Every time he saw my outfits, he would laugh, and he would be like, ‘This is perfect.’ There was a great collaboration going on in that regard. That’s why I have no issues with Punk. I don’t give a fuck with anybody tries to tell me. I don’t care. He has never done me wrong. And you can have your opinions on him and all that. But you shouldn’t vilify someone for thinking differently than you. You get I’m saying. I will say that till I’m blue in the face, he really went out of his way to really try to make something on that Collision show for me. And I feel like we were it was working. And I feel like we were really onto something. And I think that’s why that strap match with Bryan really means a lot because it just felt like the things that I had learned was like coming to a head of like, ‘Here we go.’ So, you know, yeah, he was a great dude. And I still think Punk is a good dude, in my opinion, like, he has helped. He tried to help a lot of us on that show. And I can always be thankful for that. Yeah.”
On whether people were open to his help: “I don’t know. I can’t speak on that for everybody. I know, when it came to me, I was worried about me and being like, do I have access to someone giving me help or guidance for trying to show me? yes, I did. So that’s all I could focus on.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit WhatCulture Wrestling with an h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
