10 AEW Wrestlers You Won’t Believe WWE Passed On
1. Ricky Starks
Ricky Starks continues to impress for AEW. His match with Darby Allin on Dynamite last September was outstanding and his heel persona gets more compelling each week as part of Team Taz, with Cody Rhodes tweeting he believes Ricky will one day become champion for the promotion.
Before AEW, though, he was trying to rile up enough attention for WWE to take notice of his talent and potential, having enhancement matches for them with the likes of Jinder Mahal, Ryback, The Revival and even against Kane on Main Event. All of this work earned him an official tryout with WWE.
He spoke on the experience when interviewed by Chris Van Vliet:
“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. So when I did the tryout in 2017 and I was told and saw the reaction when I killed it in the promo class and I was keeping up with everybody when we were doing the workouts and even Matt Bloom was saying how good of a job I did, I realized that they didn't want a wrestler. They wanted someone who wasn't passionate about it that they could probably make into it. And I still don't get why and that was a time period where I kind of went crazy; I dyed my hair and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. So I don't know why that happened and I thought every time that I went to WWE I was like 'This is going to be it. This is how I get in' and it wasn't and that's fine. I'm ok with that.
Starks has a similar story to most AEW talents who once tried out with WWE and then debuted for AEW, mentioning how not long after he answered Cody's open challenge for the AEW TNT Championship on Dynamite, he got a call from WWE brass wanting to bring him in. But it was too late, Starks was snapped up by AEW. Starks commented on WWE only wanting him when they couldn’t have him “I really think they dropped the ball majorly on that. I’ll never know why and I guess I don’t care now.”