Ricky Starks On When Comparisons To The Rock Bother Him

Ricky Starks and The Rock certainly have one thing in common...being handsome.

Whether it's the sense for fashion or their ability in the microphone, fans and wrestlers alike have drawn comparisons between AEW FTW Champion Ricky Starks and future WWE Hall of Famer, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. Starks recently appeared on The PWI Podcast and discussed the comparisons between he and 'The People's Champ'.

"The only thing that bothers me is when people say that I'm trying to actively copying The Rock, ya know?," Starks proclaimed. "With the way I dress and all this other dumb sh*t, it does piss me off because I'm not... I never came into wrestling trying to copy The Rock, I've never studied The Rock's promos to try and do what he does. Everything that I do, it comes from my head and how I feel and how I look.

"So, when I hear people say that and discredit my originality, it does bother me a bit. I think the issue is that some people, even outside of wrestling fans, they're so close-minded that they can't understand that there's individuality in certain people and because of the way that I dress, they taken it to the way The Rock used to dress. Like ya'll, The Rock isn't the only guy that knows how to dress, they're so used to people in Basketball shorts and in their own merchandise shirts that they can't fathom somebody coming on-screen dressing in a turtleneck and some nice slacks, ya know what I'm saying? It's the most bizarre thing, I don't mind the comparison but it's when people say verbatim, 'yeah, he's just stealing The Rock'. If you wanna see who's stealing The Rock, maybe you should start with some other promotions and go from there because I never sat up here and basically bite off The Rock's style with anything. I am who I am. So, that's the only thing that I really get irked about, it's when people try to discredit me. But in terms of comparisons, ya know, looks-wise? I actually don't mind it, me and The Rock are both handsome individuals and you can't say that a lot for some of the fans who try and talk trash, so."

One thing Starks may enjoy about being compared to The Rock, is the latter's star power, something he believes his brief run in NWA helped with before signing with AEW, which was surprising to the FTW Champion.

"I guess I underestimated the type of view I had on there," admitted Starks. "I really didn't think people knew much of me, I still kind of don't. But there's times that I'd meet people, you said so yourself, there'd be other people who'd go 'oh, I remember your days from NWA Powerrr and you cut that promo' and this and that. I'd go damn, people were really watching. So, it's cool to hear.

"I still don't think it kind of set in for me because I'm still in the mindset that I'm not very well known and I'm not a guy a lot of people know of. Especially after the injury too, I kind of went back to that...in my estimation, I had to start over as if I was on the indies. So, it's really cool to have that, I'm glad I did the NWA stuff, I thought it was a great launching pad for me, which I kind of anticipated from the get-go and also, I enjoyed the hell out of it, I thought it was fun. It was great to be there, I obviously knew that I had a ceiling there and I loved the fact that it was the first introduction to Ricky Starks that people enjoyed."

Starks has recently been a staple of weekly AEW programming alongside fellow Team Taz stablemate Powerhouse Hobbs in their feud against the newly-signed team of Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland.

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit The PWI Podcast with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.