The story about Ricky Starks being ghosted by AEW and Tony Khan got dumber when it emerged that Khan pulled Starks from upcoming dates with GCW over comments made by GCW star Effy taking a shot at Khan on a podcast.
Yes, I’m with you.
This is how business is done?
Starks is a star – not a rising star, a bona fide star – in this business, and he’s been on the shelf since March, ostensibly because of who his friends are.
Starks, who I first saw on Billy Corgan’s NWA shows on YouTube, is a backstage friend of Cody Rhodes, a former AEW star who is now the WWE champ, and CM Punk, another former AEW star who Khan ran off in favor of Jack Perry, and now is a top-of-the-card guy in WWE.
This seems to be the original sin holding Starks back.
Starks is aligned with Rhodes and Punk, and those guys are persona non grata among the top guys in AEW – Khan and Matt and Nick Jackson, who were, with Rhodes, the guys instrumental in the launch of AEW in 2019.
How Effy, a career indy wrestler who is a good worker midcard guy in GCW, plays into this is, Effy – real name: Taylor Gibson – was talking on “The Game Changer Weekly podcast” about the shows that both GCW and AEW have coming up at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan, the former stomping grounds for classic ECW shows in the 1990s and later for Ring of Honor.
Effy got it wrong, implying that AEW booked the Hammerstein for a series of shows this month after GCW announced a January date there.
That’s not the way booking works; getting a date at a place like the Hammerstein is months in the making.
It’s not that Effy got that part wrong, though, that got Starks caught up in the friendly fire.
It was this comment:
“Brett (Lauderdale, the promoter and owner of the GCW promotion) does not own a football team. Brett doesn’t have a dad who pays him to stay away. I don’t want this to be a personal thing. I don’t, but hey guys, you aren’t the only game in town,” Effy said on the GCW podcast last month.
The dig, obviously, was at Khan being the son of a billionaire, Shad Khan, who owns the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaquars, and has been the money guy behind Tony Khan’s buildout of AEW.
It was after the podcast that it got out that AEW was pulling Starks from his dates with GCW, which has also used the current AEW world champ, Jon Moxley, several times on its shows, including its pay-per-views.
Going forward, word is that AEW talent won’t be allowed to work outside dates for GCW; we’ll see if that across-the-board policy sticks, or if it’s just Starks who is taking the fall on this.
Effy addressed the fallout in a followup GCW podcast, offering the opinion that the move by AEW to pull Starks from the GCW dates wasn’t really about GCW, but rather about the details of Starks’ contract situation with AEW getting out in an interview with Chris Van Vliet, a YouTube broadcaster who himself has worked in an on-air capacity with AEW in the past.
“I think he (Starks) was very honest and direct about his situation and who approved him being at GCW, but, somebody was not excited about his contract being leaked, that they’d added on the additional option, which they legally have a right to do,” Effy said. “It’s all the timing of that happening at the exact same time and then using me as a blame. You know, go ahead, buddy. You can blame me. I can handle the blame, I can take the heat.”
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Chris Graham
