Cody Rhodes Addresses Ricky Starks Joining Him At WWE Royal Rumble
Cody Rhodes has commented on the interesting photo with him and AEW’s Ricky Starks backstage at WWE’s Royal Rumble.
There was an interesting photo that made its way online recently featuring AEW’s Ricky Starks walking into the Royal Rumble with Cody Rhodes and WWE’s John Cone of Talent Relations (a former referee). The sight of an active, contracted AEW wrestler appearing backstage at a major WWE show surprised a lot of people.
Rhodes and Starks are good friends from their time together in AEW, which is a company that Cody helped found and Starks got his start working in AEW by having a match with Cody in June 2020. Starks was signed to an AEW contract soon after that and is one of the biggest stars in AEW right now.
When Starks was shown the photo online, he joked in a tweet: “Damn they brought back GTV” with a laughing emoji beside it.
Damn they brought back GTV 😂
— Ricky Starks (@starkmanjones) January 30, 2023
In an interview with Alex McCarthy of the Daily Mail, Cody Rhodes talked about AEW’s Ricky Starks being backstage with him at the Royal Rumble.
“What an idiot, though! The locker rooms do have crossovers, people are married to people in other locker rooms, people are friends. This is a kid I started on his journey at my former home and I obviously want to follow and see his journey, but I will say it’s probably best none of my friends visit me at the shows anymore. ”
“We don’t need security cam footage of that poor dude, I hope he didn’t get into any trouble – and I don’t think he did. He was there to support a friend, who had been absolutely down and out with the pec injury.”
As mentioned by Cody there, the Royal Rumble match was his big comeback after having surgery for a torn pectoral muscle in June 2022 and he was happy to bring his friend Ricky with him. Cody added he didn’t want to cause any strife between places in reference to his former home, AEW.
“Ricky was one of the guys that nursed me through it, and helped remind me of who I can be, so I was happy to have him there and I had some other friends there but the other friends stayed on the bus because they’re not crazy yayhoos. ”
“Maybe we’ll just watch each other at a distance, I don’t want to cause any strife between any places. We all love the same thing, it’s a squared circle, it’s the wrestling industry. I always think I don’t have any rules, they are rules!”
Cody Rhodes ended up winning the WWE Royal Rumble, which means he gets to challenge Roman Reigns (or whoever the champion is at the time) for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship at WrestleMania on April 1st or 2nd.
The photo of Cody Rhodes with Ricky Starks can be seen below.
