In a recent interview as part of the Game Changer Weekly podcast, GCW’s Brett Lauderdale discussed several topics, including the announcement from Game Changer Wrestling that Ricky Starks had been pulled from their upcoming events.

“Ricky Starks has worked for GCW before, so he’s no stranger, we know him and we had a little bit of a relationship and he’s also pretty tight friends witha few of the people in our locker room. He, like many others, reached out to us and asked if we’d be interested, and of course we’d love to have a guy like Ricky Starks, who we know how talented he is, we know how popular he is, his promo and his appearance could have easily led to good business in many different directions, so I think it was a big opportunity and a big opportunity seized, and up until a couple of hours ago, it looked like we were on the right track, all of us.

Theoretically, an independent contractor is independent, and they can go and work wherever they want, but in wrestling, these independent contractors don’t seem to be very independent, they’re at the whim of an employer, which sure makes it seem like they are an employee, I don’t know, it’s above our pay grade, I’m just an indie wrestling company and I don’t have people under contract, I don’t really have a line of communication with AEW, I’ve never talked to Tony Khan on the phone, or via text in my entire life, they don’t talk to me. I’m not trying to say that necessarily in a negative context, but I guess we’ve never really had to talk.

I haven’t been on the phone with AEW where they’ve given me an explanation, or asked me any questions or anything, I have no communication with AEW over this, I don’t know where it goes beyond Ricky Starks, but of course Sunday was Bloodsport in Jersey City, and Jon Moxley was there, and Marina was there and some others, many others actually were there, both on and off-camera, so I’m not sure what the deal is.

Of course, I’ve heard things, I’ve heard things in many different directions, but again, without me hearing it directly from AEW, it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not. I’ve always considered GCW and AEW to be on the same team, so don’t know if this is meant to punish Ricky Starks, is it meant to punish GCW, is it somewhere in-between, I just don’t know, because again, I just don’t have that line of communication.

It certainly doesn’t feel freat, I would love to know if there is something that we should have done, or something we should be doing or whatever, but we got to the point where this stuff was agreed upon and announced, and fans were looking forward to this, so whenever that happens, to promote something then have to pull it back, it’s not ideal.”

The full interview is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTAEDid5Rck.