AEW star and current FTW champion Ricky Starks recently joined the Pro Wrestling Illustrated podcast, where the Absolute One named a WWE star as his choice to join the Team Taz faction, one that consists of himself, Powerhouse Hobbs, HOOK, and of course, Taz.
While Starks admits that he would like to keep the faction small, he names Sasha Banks as someone he would choose to join their ranks.
“I mean, if I had to pick anyone to be in Team Taz, it’d probably be Sasha Banks. Yeah, but I think for right now, I like it how it is. I like the fact that it’s this small group. I don’t want to overpopulate it and then it becomes something boring and just corny. Most importantly, I just don’t want it to get to that but, I think for right now, it’s good how we have it. We all have seemingly found our groove a bit and this is the best version of Team Taz in my head by far.”
Later, Starks talked about his lengthy reign as FTW champion, a title he won from Brian Cage back in 2021. Even though the belt isn’t officially recognized by AEW, he still plans on representing the championship to the best of his abilities because in his mind – that’s how he keeps it legitimate.
“I think, one, coming to AEW and winning the title was a big deal because I’m a big, big person on history and making sure that things from the past isn’t forgotten because when you’re forgotten, that’s true death, right? I always think of things in that sense, although it may be a bit morbid but I think it’s cool to have a piece of history like that on television and to carry it. That is the original title from 1998 so that thing has seen so much. I would even akin it to the ‘Smoking Skull Title’. Imagine if you had that title, the original one. You would cherish that and honor that with everything because of the history that it has and I’m not saying they are on the same level but I’m just saying in terms of having such a piece of history like that is insane and so for me, I think it’s more important to have this title and represent it in the best way I can and do with it what I can and I know that it won’t be perfect and I know that it’s things outside of my control, but at the end of the day, I wanna make sure I do the best that I can with the title and represent it and make sure that it has some type of legitimacy, regardless if it’s recognized or not.”
Starks will be defending the FTW championship against Jungle Boy on next week’s episode of AEW Dynamite from Long Island, New York.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)
