Ricky Starks made his AEW debut in June against Cody Rhodes. At the time, Rhodes was taking on wrestlers from outside the promotion in TNT title matches on Dynamite. AEW signed Starks shortly after. According to comments he made recently in an interview with Chris Van Vliet, WWE contacted Starks shortly after his match against Cody as well.

Starks had actually tried out for WWE in 2017. He told Van Vliet that he doesn’t believe he was close to being signed.

“I don’t think I was close at all and I’ll never understand why. I love wrestling. I’ve never played any sports, I never did anything, I only watched wrestling. And I have immersed myself and become obsessed with it and I love it to death,” Starks said about his tryout.

Later in the interview, he talked about WWE contacting him after his match against Cody this summer.

“The funny thing is, the day that I wrestled Cody I got a phone call from WWE saying ‘Hey, we’ve been watching you and we wanted to bring you in’. I said ‘Oh really? oh ok. Interesting. Of all days’. And so I entertained that conversation because I was curious but I think I knew already which decision I was going to make,” Starks said.

“And I had a very dear, great friend tell me once: you should look at the people who want to invest in you and not know anything about you as opposed to the people who only wanted you when they saw someone else having interest. So that put things in perspective and I don’t hold any ill will towards WWE but I really think they dropped the ball majorly on that. I’ll never know why and I guess I don’t care now.”

The full interview with Ricky Starks can be viewed in the player below: