Ricky Starks Recalls Helping The Undertaker Prepare For WrestleMania Match

Ricky Starks has shared a story about how he got to help The Undertaker prepare for one of his WrestleMania matches.

On the December 14th edition of AEW Dynamite, Ricky Starks had the biggest match of his pro wrestling career to date. Starks competed against Maxwell Jacob Friedman (MJF) for the AEW World Title in a competitive match. Starks nearly won the championship, but MJF used a low blow (that the referee didn’t see) and managed to beat Starks shortly after that.

While Starks has had some success in AEW as a former FTW Champion, he has his eyes on the big prize and many people believe that he might make it to that World Championship level some day soon.

Prior to joining AEW in 2020, Starks was known as a talented independent wrestler that was a star on the rise after starting his pro wrestling career at 2011. He also got the chance to work with The Undertaker prior to WrestleMania 34 in 2018 when The Undertaker faced John Cena at that event.

During an interview with The Wrestling Classic, Starks talked about helping The Undertaker train for his WrestleMania match with Cena.

“Taker’s like my guy. Taker’s my favorite wrestler of all time. The wildest thing is that as I got older, I actually met him. I had him watch one of my matches for the indies. I sparred with him in preparation for his match against John Cena at WrestleMania.”

That match saw The Undertaker beat Cena in a short match that only three minutes with The Undertaker being praised for looking very sharp in the match despite not wrestling much at that point in his career. Ricky Starks added that he still keeps in touch with The Undertaker.

“I kept in touch with Taker still to this day when I see him, still the same, ‘Hey man, how you doing? I’m proud of you.’ That’s what he’s told me, he’s proud of me and I’m doing great so yeah, it’s really wild to go from that to sitting on a couch with [someone] that you loved when you were growing up.”

Ricky Starks has a big match against Chris Jericho on the January 4th edition of AEW Dynamite. It’s the first time Starks has ever wrestled the former eight-time World Champion Jericho.

H/T PostWrestling for the transcription.