Ricky Starks, now Ricky Saints in NXT, had a lot to say on the Busted Open After Dark radio show last night.
Saints officially signed his NXT contract on last night’s show and his first NXT match was set. On next week’s show he and Je’Von Evans will take on Ethan Page and Wes Lee.
Saints told Ray it wasn’t hard to keep everything about NXT a secret because he mostly keeps to himself.
“I was worried about other people saying something,” said Saints admitting that he told his mother.
Saints spoke about training with The Undertaker years ago and buying him a bottle of spirits to thank him for everything he had done for him. The Undertaker himself was training so he had cut out alcohol at the time.
“I said to him, fair enough but when I sign with WWE let’s have a shot and we shook on it. So, I am waiting for that shot,” he said laughing.
Saints detailed the thinking behind his new name ‘Saints’. He is “a product of New Orleans” he wanted to pay respect to that. His new last name is a play or tribute to New Orleans, their football team, the French influence, etc.
“It is as close as you are going to get to Starks…It think it is cool to have a piece of home with me and the person doesn’t change,” he said.
Saints said that one of his big goals is to be at WrestleMania in New Orleans next year and what big lesson he learned as he has matured in the industry.
“I won’t set up here and let someone dictate how I see myself. Who are you? I should be proud of what I have done and proud of the things I am going to accomplish. I should speak it out loud on the mountain tops because I am the one putting in the work. I didn’t f—–g kill myself just because I had to listen to some guy tell me ‘You think to high of yourself so simmer down!”. Screw you! Screw you and everything about you! Because where I am going I am going to supersede everything that you have ever done,” said Saints about others trying to hold him back or down in a business where egos abound and being selfish at times is the only way to move up the roster because only you can look after you.
Saints spoke to Bully Ray about his time in AEW and what he believes went wrong there.
“There are a bunch of things that culminated. I don’t know the specifics of what it was,” said Saints rejecting the notion that it had anything to do with him attending the Royal Rumble or WrestleMania cheering a friend on. That Rumble footage was leaked and he was visiting someone backstage.
“Not only that, I left after the first match,” he said confirming that Tony Khan was fine with all of that.
Saints himself finds it difficult to point at a particular circumstance to what lead to his downfall in AEW.
“I cannot tell you exactly what the moment was. You could say it was Punk leaving and things kind of fell apart. Absolutely, I probably agree with you. It could also be that Ricky didn’t play the politics well enough. Okay, for sure…Maybe I didn’t protect myself in that way. What I can say for myself is that when I got hurt in March, that was it. I never came back. Even though I wasn’t hurt it was a precaution thing where I got scared because I suffered a ‘stinger’ and then I was fine. After that, no dice. No communication. No nothing,” said Saints.
“I don’t know explicitly where it went wrong. I cannot point to one thing. I can say it was a storm of things, probably…Never once was I not willing to do something. Never once was I sabotaging anything. What I think it probably was it was things said to him (Khan) by other people, maybe. I don’t know…I will say this there are people who stuck their noses in my creative business that should never have happened,” Saints explained saying he was referring to veterans within AEW.
Having only been in NXT for two week, Saints spoke about the different between AEW and NXT though. He called NXT a “well-oiled machine” that already worked their ‘kinks’ out.
RELATED LINKS
Ricky Starks / Ricky Saints Archive
