By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Ricky Starks suffered an apparent stinger during his tag team match with Big Bill against “Top Flight” Dante Martin and Darius Martin. Wade Keller of ProWrestling.net reports that the match concluded earlier than planned as a result of the injury scare. Starks took to Instagram.com afterward to share a positive udpate. “I’m all good, everything checked out fine,” Starks wrote. “Was being precautious.” Read more at PWTorch.com.
Powell’s POV: I correctly assumed in my live review that the injury occurred when Starks took a Pele Kick from Darius. For those who missed it, Starks was rolled up and pinned and did not kick out, but the referee stopped his count at two. Starks was then hit with an assisted DDT and pinned. Keller’s story notes that it’s unclear whether Top Flight were the planned winners of the quarterfinal match in the AEW Tag Team Title tournament. Obviously, it’s great news that Starks seems to have avoided another major neck injury.
Starks is kicked, rolled up and pinned.
The ref notices it’s not the finish, but allows Starks to then get DDT’d?
What is with this company?!
Jeff Hardy gets injured and they only talk about saftey protocols after the match. Where were they here? That ref should have been trained to check on Ricky, not allow a DDT.
Nobody in AEW is held to any kind of even minimal professional standards.
This is the company that let Matt Hardy get his brain scrambled and keep going.
This is the company with a metric shit ton of people injured.
This is the company run by a fanboy with a trust fund who treats it like a real life e-fed and goes on twitter rants anytime his bullshit is called out publicly.
I genuinely hope the company goes under and TNA gets a bigger TV deal so they can return to the #2 wrestling slot.
Tribalism aside, this is BAD stuff. In my layman’s opinion, there is some massive safety training that AEW needs to complete, like yesterday! The refs needs to be much better prepared for in-match audibles and the wrestlers themselves, at the least, need to improve communication.
Someone is going to get seriously injured, and no fan wants to see that happen.