AEW National champion Ricochet’s made it quite clear he prefers his current place of employment to his former one, WWE. Appearing on The Mark Hoke Show yesterday (Feb. 3), Ricochet went a little more in-depth while talking about his WWE run — specifically the 2019-2024 stretch on the main roster before he left.
Ricochet said the version of him/his character we’re getting in AEW now is the continuation of the Ricochet who was a favorite in Japan and on the independent scene. As for those five years
after signing in 2018 and getting a brief NXT run? Ricochet uses an MCU analogy to describe those:
“You’ve seen the Marvel movies? Thanos snaps, and there was a five-year blip of people [who] were just gone.
“That five years was like being blipped away into a different universe. It just wasn’t what I was doing, it wasn’t me. Coming back to AEW and finding that love, it’s like when Tony Stark finally defeated Thanos and all the people came back. That’s how I feel, Ricochet finally came back to what he was doing. And I feel like that five years was just blipped away.”
Tony Stark died defeating Thanos after the portion of the universe’s population the Mad Titan had “snapped” away had already been returned by Bruce Banner. But I feel pretty darn nerdy just typing that, and Tony might be about to come back as an alternate universe Victor Von Doom or something… so let’s get back to Ricochet rather than picking apart his analogy.
He took it a step farther with his next statements:
“I already know how this is going to sound, and I already know how people are going to take this, but I think that the day we got called up to Raw was the worst thing that happened to Ricochet’s wrestling career… that five years really tarnished Ricochet’s wrestling legacy.”
While I’d agree that Ricochet is treated like a bigger deal in AEW than he was in WWE (even though he’s essentially still in the midcard), and that his time on Raw wasn’t the greatest stretch of his career — I’m not sure I’d agree that it specifically hurt his in-ring reputation. There were a lot of great matches from those years against guys like Mustafa Ali, Drew McIntyre, Sami Zayn, and Ilja Dragunov. You don’t need to go 20 minutes or be in Japan for a worthwhile match.
But he’s representing a company he clearly thinks is the best place for him, and it’s a good conversation starter… so I’m not mad at Ric or anything.
Let us know what your reaction to his quotes are in the comments below, though.
