Before he became each North American and NXT Champion in WWE, Ricky Saints was generally known as Ricky Starks in AEW. Nonetheless, Saints seemingly had some issues in Tony Khan’s company in 2024, and he was absent from AEW programming for nearly a 12 months, and even reportedly asked for his release at first of 2025. While he was away from AEW, Saints wrestled a handful of matches on the independent scene, including at House of Glory and DEFY. On an episode of “Getting Over: Wrestling Podcast<\/a>,” Saints reflected on his AEW absence and supreme departure, and said he was restless.<\/p>\n “I’m so used to wrestling on a regular basis. I feel that is the form of person I’m,” Saints explained. “I’m used to creating. I’m used to using my body for this stuff. To not have that was a really odd place to be at mentally. So, you are having to determine these other things, especially when it goes to just like the independents, it was not as easy to get a few of these independent dates cleared. That is not a knock on the corporate itself, it’s only a conflict of interest for AEW and whatever independent that I desired to do. But, at the tip of the day, all of it worked out. I’m thankful for either side. I’m thankful for AEW. I’m thankful for the independents as well.”<\/p>\n Saints was faraway from AEW’s roster page on February 10 of last 12 months. He appeared live within the WWE Performance Center, though he initially didn’t say a word, on the February 11 edition of “WWE NXT.” He would go on to win his first WWE gold in only his third match on the brand.<\/p>\n In the event you use any quotes from this text, please credit “Getting Over: Wrestling Podcast” and supply a h\/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/article><\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WWE Before he became each North American and NXT Champion in WWE, Ricky Saints was generally known as Ricky Starks in AEW. Nonetheless, Saints seemingly had some issues in Tony Khan’s company in 2024, and he was absent from AEW programming for nearly a 12 months, and even reportedly asked for his release at first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":317121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[338],"tags":[5646,10436,6833,823,2409,12980,1367,16198],"class_list":["post-317120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-absence","tag-aew","tag-departure","tag-reflects","tag-ricky","tag-saints","tag-thankful","tag-wwes"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317120"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317123,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317120\/revisions\/317123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}