During a recent appearance on the “PWI Podcast”, AEW star Ricky Starks noted that he doesn’t mind the comparisons to The Rock, but he admits there are times where he gets annoyed by them.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On comparisons to The Rock: “So, when I hear people say that and discredit my originality, it does bother me a bit. I think the issue is that some people, even outside of wrestling fans, they’re so close-minded that they can’t understand that there’s individuality in certain people and because of the way that I dress, they taken it to the way The Rock used to dress. Like ya’ll, The Rock isn’t the only guy that knows how to dress, they’re so used to people in Basketball shorts and in their own merchandise shirts that they can’t fathom somebody coming on-screen dressing in a turtleneck and some nice slacks, ya know what I’m saying? It’s the most bizarre thing, I don’t mind the comparison but it’s when people say verbatim, ‘yeah, he’s just stealing The Rock’. If you wanna see who’s stealing The Rock, maybe you should start with some other promotions and go from there because I never sat up here and basically bite off The Rock’s style with anything. I am who I am. So, that’s the only thing that I really get irked about, it’s when people try to discredit me. But in terms of comparisons, ya know, looks-wise? I actually don’t mind it, me and The Rock are both handsome individuals and you can’t say that a lot for some of the fans who try and talk trash, so.”
On his star power thanks to the NWA: “I guess I underestimated the type of view I had on there. I really didn’t think people knew much of me, I still kind of don’t. But there’s times that I’d meet people, you said so yourself, there’d be other people who’d go ‘oh, I remember your days from NWA Powerrr and you cut that promo’ and this and that. I’d go damn, people were really watching. So, it’s cool to hear. I still don’t think it kind of set in for me because I’m still in the mindset that I’m not very well known and I’m not a guy a lot of people know of. Especially after the injury too, I kind of went back to that…in my estimation, I had to start over as if I was on the indies. So, it’s really cool to have that, I’m glad I did the NWA stuff, I thought it was a great launching pad for me, which I kind of anticipated from the get-go and also, I enjoyed the hell out of it, I thought it was fun. It was great to be there, I obviously knew that I had a ceiling there and I loved the fact that it was the first introduction to Ricky Starks that people enjoyed.”
