EFFY Clarifies Recent Comment Towards AEW & The Khans and Doesn’t Want To Push Fans Away From GCW Over His Actions

As noted before, Ricky Starks was recently pulled from all of his upcoming bookings with Game Changer Wrestling due to issues caused by recent controversial comments made by GCW talent EFFY directed towards AEW CEO Tony Khan, Khan’s father Shad, and the timing of AEW’s booking of the Hammerstein Ballroom for AEW and ROH shows this December. EFFY recently doubled down on his comments directed towards AEW over Starks’ pulled GCW bookings and him being blamed for the situation.

The Ringer’s The Masked Man Show podcast held a recent interview with EFFY. One of the topics discussed included EFFY clarifying his past comments and how he did not mean to go viral over his comments and how it was more mean spirited than he intended it to be.

“I don’t mean to go viral. These are long-form, hour, hour and a half podcasts. I’m coming home, I’m talking with my roommate, they don’t have that much wrestling knowledge other than what I’ve told them about, they come from a whole different world. I was coming home before we started the podcast and kind of explaining my week like this happened and this happened or being really impressed like I ran into so and so who to me would be a legendary person and then I’d have to objectively explain them to him. So, I think sometimes I find myself where I forget — it’s not an excuse by any means, I don’t always remember I’m recording and this is going out. With it being certain clips that are going viral, there are luls in the period of like, I can say whatever I want and then nobody will really notice it. But, if something particularly has to do with that week or has to do what’s going on, it does seem to pick up a little bit of steam.

Once again, not an excuse, I’m a gay guy in the gay community, we’re very shady to each other and I think it comes from a place of we’ve always felt like outcasts, we’ve always been on the outside. With our version of love, we can say we love you so much and also those pants are horrible and you look terrible in this outfit. Sometimes it comes across a little more mean spirited than I think I mean for it to. I had long conversations yesterday with a lot of people about this and it was never my intention for this clip to get that kind of attention, a lot of times I feel like, especially being out on the indies all the time, whatever press or news I get or people looking to me to be a headstone of the independents, I’m still just go go go forward. Even when I’m saying I don’t like this about WWE or I don’t like this about AEW, it feels like the peasant throwing rocks at the side of the castle until they look over the side of the wall and go, ‘Somebody’s attacking our castle.’ Then, you kind of have to ran back and go, yeah, all press is good press, but this press is something I’ve had to go through and explain myself on. I talked to my dad on thanksgiving and they said, you know, your dad Billy, he’ll get real fired up about something, he’ll have all of these talking points, he’ll do his research, he’ll tell you how it feels, and as soon as he tells you, he’s not really involved anymore, he just said his peace and got his point out.”

EFFY also gave his thoughts about how sometimes says stuff from a business perspective and how he used to run a movie company.

“I think it’s hard for people to believe, a lot of times I’m saying this stuff, I’m noticing things as someone who used to own a business, as someone who used to, I ran a movie company. I just see businesses and I go, I don’t think that’s how I’d do that if I was running a business. Again, it’s not my business. GCW, also not my business. I think with humanity getting involved with me being in the middle of this, emotions get the better of you sometimes. It’s hard to step back now and go, well, I don’t really disagree with anything I said but I do think I was a little bit harsh, I do think I was rude, and I do think this isn’t my thing to fight. I’m not Ricky Starks, I’m not signing an AEW contract, I’m not Tony Khan, I’m not Brett Lauderdale running GCW. I always want to be honest to myself, I want to put forth hard work to — I think if you’re gonna be talking shit, you least got to back it up with the product you’re putting out.”

EFFY also gave his thoughts about how he feels like he “emotionally cuts” at people sometimes due to GCW’s place in the wrestling industry and how he does not want to push fans away from the company over comments he makes.

“Some of this talkiness or some of this emotionally cutting at people to say, some of it I think comes from that place of like, we at GCW and on the indies, we’re scraping to make things work. We’re constantly trying to do new things. Getting to work at the American Dream mall a few weeks ago for GCW was insane. There are very cool things happening out here on the indies that haven’t happened before, but we are still all the time grass roots, all the time trying to point people towards our product. The amount of wrestling fans that are tuning in and out to whatever program, our biggest problem is that they don’t know that we even exist. If you’re locked into wrestling, if you’re locked into everything going on, you probably have an idea, but it doesn’t help that your first impression of me or GCW is this gay boy is running his mouth. For that it’s like, okay. I love the press, I think it’s great, people are talking about GCW. People are talking about Ricky Starks, people are talking about Cardona last night showing up saying he was going to wrestle at the ROH Hammerstein. You kinda go, well, alright, I’m a PR person and I’m not doing a very good PR job if the only things they are seeing out of me are me being a snarky little baby. The Effy fans that have been in front of me, they’re gonna kind of find their way into my corner, but I don’t want to push other people away. It’s the same thing with being an Effy fan — I’m glad you’re there to see Effy, I don’t think you have to be an Effy fan to be there. I’ve got one segment on a ten match card, I don’t want to push other people away from coming to see these other wrestlers or seeing the rest of the show because I can’t shut the hell up. Whether I’m right or wrong, it doesn’t matter.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com