In an interview with Chris Van Vliet for Insight (via Fightful), Ricky Starks spoke about attending WWE Wrestlemania XL, which he said AEW owner Tony Khan was okay with him doing. He noted that he wasn’t the only AEW talent to attend the show, which he did to support Cody Rhodes and Jade Cargill.
He said: “You know who else was in the box with me? (Dustin Rhodes). QT Marshall. Aaron Solo. This is not me putting them on blast. They were in the box. Fans have footage of me celebrating. There was no issue about that. There was no issue at all. Before I went, Tony (Khan) said, ‘Hey, it’s okay.’ There was no issue. If he actually didn’t mean that, okay, I don’t know. There was no issue with that and I still, to this day, don’t see a problem with it. I got into this because I am a fan. I love professional wrestling. Regardless of where I work, I’m going to support people that I love and I’m going to support wrestling in general. I was there to watch Jade’s first Mania match and was extremely proud. I was at Mania the year before that and saw Cody lose. There is no issue with somebody being at another show. Jay-Z isn’t going to go to a J. Cole concert? I remember seeing quote tweets about how I was dickriding Cody because I was there. If you took this situation out of the scope of wrestling, people would think it’s normal, but supposedly, for some reason, it is so taboo to not be over there when you work here. Who cares? We’re all getting paid, aren’t we? There are people at NXT who are at AEW shows, all the time. Never an issue. When we did the Forum, there was people from WWE backstage. Sure, they weren’t photographed, but you think I’m going to tell a fan, who paid for their seat, to not photograph me up in the box seat? I didn’t give a fuck, and I still don’t. I didn’t care about the Rumble thing or the Mania thing. Nobody is going to make me feel like a bad person for doing something out of the goodness of my heart. I wanted to enjoy live wrestling and see my friends wrestle live, and that’s what I did.“
