David Starr Says He Respects ROH History But Would Never Accept A Paycheck From Sinclair Broadcast Group
David Starr reflects on the promo that gained him massive amounts of attention on social media.
“The Product” David Starr sent out a promo video on social media in March to promote his Ring Of Honor World Championship match against then-champion Jay Lethal at IWPA’s ‘Passover Bash’ show in Israel that occurred on April 21st. On the road to the show, Jay Lethal dropped the ROH World Title to Matt Taven at ROH/NJPW’s G1 Supercard. In the aforementioned promotional video, Starr called out Sinclair Broadcast Group which is ROH’s parent company and referred to them as “right-winged extremists” and minced no words about his personal thoughts about the telecommunications conglomerate.
David Starr was eventually told to take the promo down but he continued expressing his opinion about the powers that be. In late March, Starr joined the ‘Jobbing Out’ podcast and reflected on the positive and negative reception that he received from the promo and made it clear that he knew he would likely never have the chance to work with Ring Of Honor again if he released that promo to the public.
“When I found out that the match was going to be for the Ring Of Honor Title, I was out in Liverpool after a show with a couple friends, and I just went on my phone and I saw I was getting tagged in a bunch of tweets and talking abut the fact that this match was happening for the Ring Of Honor Title, and I had already known I was wrestling Lethal, but I didn’t know it was gonna be for the title and then all of sudden that just dropped, and it’s not like Ring Of Honor tagged me in their tweets. For whatever reason, they decided that they didn’t want to tag me in their tweets but they included me in the picture that they posted. Whatever.” Starr chuckled. “So, I looked over at my friend who’s a Jewish friend of mine and I said, ‘I’m gonna say something about this and it might get some people talking’, and then I told him and he was like, ‘Okay, what do you wanna say?’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t think that I can speak about the things that I speak about and ignore the elephant in the room with Sinclair Broadcast being what they are and with, obviously, the government of Israel doing what the government of Israel does’. So, obviously it’s very delicate and my dad is very, very, very, everything pro-Israel and stuff so I knew it’d be touchy with him because we’ve gotten into heated discussions about it, and obviously, I knew that with doing this, saying what I felt needed to be said, that I wouldn’t probably ever work for Ring Of Honor. But I wasn’t really concerned with that because I never, ever want to receive a paycheck from that corporation. So that didn’t really bother me, that idea.” Starr said.
Starr continued opening his thoughts and clarified that he respects the history of Ring Of Honor wrestling but that respect that does not stand for Sinclair. Starr said that he initially wanted to distinguish the difference between the two but it was difficult to do that.
“Initially, I wanted to distinguish the difference between the wrestling company and the corporation that owns it, but it’s hard to do that, because I love and respect and appreciate the history that Ring Of Honor wrestling is but obviously I can’t stay silent and front up like Sinclair has given me this platform essentially, and I just wanted to use that platform which was much larger than mine to call them what they are, which, you know, it is what it is. I’ve had to take it down and stuff because they got a little upset for being identified for what they are, and yeah.” Starr continued, “I guess that’s that. It was just kinda something I felt I had to do.”
David Starr was in action on WrestleMania weekend at a number of shows and to read the results from those respective shows, click here.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the ‘Jobbing Out’ podcast with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.
