AEW Star Says No One Has Been Able To Touch AEW When It Comes To Cinematic Matches
Pro wrestling has been full of cinematic matches since the COVID-19 pandemic forced companies to switch things up in early 2020, and before that promotions like Lucha Underground and Impact Wrestling were creating cinematic content, notably with Matt Hardy's Broken Universe. FTW Champion Ricky Starks says AEW put on wrestling's best cinematic match at Revolution 2021 back in March as Sting and Darby Allin defeated he and Brian Cage in a cinematic Street Fight.
Revolution marked Sting's first AEW match, and his first match in more than 5 years since retiring after his last WWE run. The match was filmed at an undisclosed warehouse location near Atlanta, where a ring was set up. The finish saw Sting pin Starks after a Scorpion Death Drop. Starks recently spoke with Alex McCarthy of talkSPORT and called this the best cinematic match ever.
"It's crazy to think about, isn't it?," Starks said of working with The Stinger. "It's crazy to think about where I was two years ago to now. I wasn't scared working with Sting. Sting is a legend obviously and I like the pressure of making sure that, hey, this is his first match back in six years right?
"That whole process was so awesome to see. Sting, while there's some issues there in the past, I've come around to respect Sting. You can hear it first [laughs]. I do respect him. So to not only have the best cinematic match ever in wrestling, but to also be in a ring and wrestle Sting is crazy. That's just something I never thought I'd say."
Starks elaborated and said no one else in pro wrestling has been able to touch the cinematic Street Fight. He revealed it took two days to shoot.
"That took two days to do," Starks said of the Revolution Street Fight. "I know that we all went into it with the mindset that this is going to be the best cinematic matchup ever and so far no one else has been able to touch it. It still stands at the very top as the best cinematic match, period. No one can tell me different."
Starks also talked about AEW's momentum and how locker room morale is these days.
"We're all excited," Starks said. "So excited because it's great to finally feel like we're slowly turning the corner into the new phase of wrestling popularity, because wrestling is all cyclical. It has to come back around eventually. I think the sellout for the United Center, the sellout for Arthur Ashe stadium, this is all just like a snowball going down a hill. We cannot be stopped.
"We're all just so excited for it because this is what everyone has been wanting and working towards. We just want to present the best product possible and to say that, hey, the other company WWE looks at us as competition? You damn right they do, because who else would they look at as competition?"
He continued, "We're making all the right moves, we got the ratings on lock; it's just a hot time for us. The fact that we're still a start-up company and we're going up against a tenured company like WWE, I think that's pretty cool. And it's great for WWE as well because they have competition. We know that competition breeds better product, better wrestling; it brings out the best in anyone. If fans have an option to choose between AEW and WWE, if the wrestlers have the option to choose between AEW and WWE I think that's great for the business as a whole."