News

Ricky Starks On Intense Promo With MJF On AEW Dynamite

By John Canton • Published 9th December 2022
ricky starks mjf aew

Ricky Starks impressed a lot of people with a strong promo on AEW Dynamite and he talked about the process of coming up with it.

On the December 7th edition of AEW Dynamite, Ricky Starks competed in the Dynamite Diamond Battle Royal. He made it to the final three with Ethan Page and Matt Hardy. Starks eliminated Hardy first followed by Page to win the match. That means Starks will have a future match with MJF for possession of the Dynamite Diamond.

Starks will also face MJF for the AEW World Title next Wednesday, December 14th on the Winter is Coming episode of AEW Dynamite. Starks earned that title shot by winning the AEW World Title Eliminator tournament recently.

While Ricky Starks winning the battle royal was a big win for him, it was the promo after the match that he cut on MJF that got the wrestling world talking. Starks delivered one of the best promos of his career after MJF did his usual bit about being the AEW World Champion that is better than the audience while also trashing the city they were in as usual.

Among the lines that Starks used was this gem: “I’m slapping that mole off your neck, I’m stomping an a**hole into you, and I’m taking that title.”

In an interview with ComicBook.com, Starks revealed that he wrote his promo out beforehand and tried to memorize it even though he had to wrestle a match before the promo as usual.

“I think you’ll hear a lot of wrestlers say, ‘Oh, I didn’t think of it. I didn’t plan it out, I didn’t write it out.’ And Cody [Rhodes] makes the same joke, but that’s bull. Even the best promos had to have some type of structure to them. And I am somewhat in the same way, admittedly. I’m not one to really pull back the curtain on anything here, but yesterday, earlier in the day, I had wrote out this whole thing, and in my head memorized it and did all this, and stressed myself out, and then had a match to do. Anything could have gone wrong where I just forget it in the match.”

Ricky Starks went on to say that after hearing MJF’s promo toward him, he decided to just wing it because he knew what he wanted to say.

“I remember Max cutting that promo and saying these comments, and in that moment I was like, ‘I’ll just wing it. I’ll just wing it. I know where I want to go and what I want to get to, and I’ll just fill in the blanks.’ So what you saw out there was me winging it. That’s how I operate. Yes, I can come up with some lines and think about it, but for the most part, whatever I feel, I just say, and it comes off in that moment.”

Starks would go on to say that he was just speaking from the heart and that’s why the promo worked so well for him.