WWE NXT Champ Ricky Saints Explains Why He Still Wrestles With A Chip On His Shoulder
At 35 years old, Ricky Saints is one of the older names on the "NXT" roster, but even with the NXT Championship around his waist, he still has to deal with the way he's viewed backstage. "NXT" is known as the developmental brand of WWE, but unlike many of the names Saints shares a locker room with, he's been wrestling for years and held championship gold in multiple promotion, and according to him, this distinction sometimes gets to him.
"Even to this day I have a chip on my shoulder and it's not just from one thing," Saints admitted during an appearance on "Busted Open Radio." "You can pull from the reaction from AEW fans to here, and vice-versa, but it's even beyond that. ... I'm sitting across the table from an athlete who looks at me differently; as if he's better than me!"
The champion further explained that he has to deal with these feelings everyday or whenever he goes to the WWE Performance Center, and claimed that he simply doesn't want people to look at him as a lesser wrestler or to treat him that way.
"The fire that you see, and that emotion comes from a real place that is still alive; I don't think it'll ever go away, and I think that the day that it does? I think I'm screwed," Saints expressed. "I appreciate it for that and I've figured out a way to use that type of frustration that I still have."
Ricky Saints also commented on the past five years of his career from NWA, to AEW, to WWE
The past five years for Ricky Saints have seen the NXT Champion take an interesting journey from the NWA to his lengthy run with AEW, where he won the AEW World Tag Team Championship and FTW Championship, before his current run in WWE. However, Saints claims he doesn't have a plan for what lies ahead.
"I don't know where that came from. ... Things just come to me, one day they come to me," he explained. "I don't think of my story as anything crazy or anything like that, but it is interesting when we go from NWA, to AEW, to now WWE. That's not something that I would ever have predicted."
Saints did however add that he does have short term goals along the way, and milestones in WWE that he wants to work towards, however even when he accomplishes them, he knows he still wants more. "That is something I'm very cognitive of – when it comes to how my life has kind of panned out here, especially my career."
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Busted Open Radio" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.