ricky starks
Photo Credit: All Elite Wrestling

Ricky Starks Was A Futon Wrestler, Invented The ‘Kid Krusher’ Before Billy Kidman Did It On TV

Ricky Starks was inventing your favorite wrestling moves before they were ever seen on television.

During an interview with Rick Ucchino with Bleav in Pro Wrestling, Ricky Starks was asked if he wrestled on a trampoline before he became a professional wrestler. Starks said that he actually used a futon, then said that he impressed himself after seeing Billy Kidman perform a finisher he “invented” the week prior at home.

“No actually I was a futon kid. We wrestled on a futon and broke that. I remember inventing, I invented Billy Kidman’s finisher. You know, the [Kid Krusher] where he gets behind you and hooks you, it’s like the reverse Pedigree. I remember doing that and then the next week,” Starks explained, “I saw him do it and I was like wow, look at me, creative genius.”

Ricky Starks is also gifted on the mic too, and gets favorable reactions for his roasts and disses, such as his recent “Kenan and Kel” dig at Keith Lee and Swerve Strickland. Starks says that he sometimes has something ready to go, but he’s always been quick-witted and that’s one area where no one will ever beat him.

“Sometimes I may have something loaded in the chamber that I’ve thought of right before I’ve gone out. Sometimes they just come off the top of my head. No one in AEW, really no one in wrestling, is as good as I am when it comes to roasting. We have a l of corny people that have these terrible… as you saw on Dynamite, we had a lot of terrible, corny comebacks. It’s terrible, and this is why some of these people get made fun of by people like me. I’m a very quick-witted person. I have a very silver, metal tongue. I will slice through you. You may be able to beat my ass, but I can make you cry. And that’s how it used to be in school. Some kids could beat me up, and that was fine, but man, did I cut deep. It just comes naturally to me.”

Ricky Starks and Powerhouse Hobbs will be one of two teams challenging Jurassic Express for the AEW World Tag Team Championship at Double Or Nothing on Sunday. Starks, who is also the FTW Champion, spoke about what winning the titles would mean to him and said that it would solidify their respective spots in the company.

“I think winning those titles is just a fact of solidifying ourselves as someone who is credible, if not more credible than most of the people that you see currently on television. I think Team Taz or me and Hobbs, should I say, our story has been a bit of a roller coaster in a way where we had a lot of ups and we had a lot of downs. And I think having that, especially winning at a pay-per-view, would just be a cherry on the cake there. Here’s the deal, though. That is our, obviously that’s me and Hobbs’ first time teaming on a pay-per-view. So we have that, on top of winning the titles, on top of that, we have the idea that me and Hobbs are credible main eventers that should be treated as such. Obviously we are. And I think that would even just let people know, hey, we’re not a group of dudes that should be taken lightly. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of them. Bryan Danielson, Moxley, these tag teams that we have currently.”

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