Following his in-ring debut for House of Glory on Friday night in Chicago, Ricky Starks cut a passionate promo and told the live crowd that he will be “absolute” until the day he dies.
Starks was defeated by HOG Champion Mike Santana via DQ in the main event. He then grabbed the microphone and addressed the fans, saying:
“Every time I grab this (microphone), I somehow get in trouble,” Starks joked to start his promo.
“I’m going to say this as plainly as this: I cannot thank each and every one of you sitting over there, the meet and greet, from reading your messages, asking that I’m mentally OK, asking if I’m good, checking on me. You don’t know me from —-, but that’s the thing about this wrestling s–t is that, hey, it don’t matter. We’re all a part of one thing, right?”
“I have loved wrestling since I was seven. I told my mom I would buy her a house off of this, and God damn it, I have done that, and I am close to giving her everything else that she wants. I don’t take anything easy. I take it the hard way. I take things the way that I want to. If the road ain’t paved for cement, guess what? I guess I’m putting on my construction hat and I’m going to work.”
“If you thought that I was somebody less than a year ago, guess what? You’re sadly mistaken because now I’ve evolved to a man four years from today. And that’s saying something because a lot of y’all, a lot of y’all have not seen anything yet from me.”
Ricky Starks after his match with Santana tonight, thanks the fans and everyone for all the messages and for checking up on him.
— 𝐃𝐫𝐚𝐕𝐞𝐧 (@WrestlingCovers) January 18, 2025
“A lot of y’all have not seen anything yet from me.”
pic.twitter.com/eX7bCJf0BS
Friday night was Starks’ first match of 2025. Before that, he hadn’t wrestled since a Glory Pro event in November.
Starks has been absent from AEW programming since March 2024. He made a surprise appearance at a GCW show in November and looked to be entering a feud with Matt Cardona in the promotion. However, shortly after he arrived in GCW, it was announced that he had been pulled from all future appearances with the company. Dave Meltzer later reported that AEW pulled Starks from the shows due to negative comments GCW’s Effy made on his podcast about Shad Khan.
“While nobody officially said anything, the strong belief, actually confirmed to us, is that it was the comments from Effy of GCW on Tony Khan, particularly a line he said about Khan’s father paying him to stay away, led to Khan feeling he didn’t want to do business with GCW,” Meltzer wrote.