AEW Star Backstage At WWE Royal Rumble

A star of All Elite Wrestling was backstage at WWE's Royal Rumble pay-per-view in San Antonio, Texas on Saturday, January 28.

A photo from what appears to be CCTV footage backstage at the Alamodome has revealed that Ricky Starks was backstage at the Rumble. Starks can be seen alongside Cody Rhodes and Senior Manager of Talent Relations John Cone. 

Starks is good friends with Cody Rhodes and The American Nightmare helped bring him to All Elite Wrestling, with Starks making his AEW debut against Rhodes during one of Cody's TNT Title Open Challenge matches. The pair have remained close and Starks called Cody a "genuine" friend in an interview in 2022. 

Rhodes left AEW in February 2022 and he made his in-ring return from injury at the Royal Rumble, entering the Men's Rumble match at #30 and winning the whole thing by last eliminating GUNTHER. He will main-event WrestleMania 39 as a result of his win. 

Starks joked about the photo of him at the Rumble, tweeting, "Damn they brought back GTV" with a crying laughing emoji. 

GTV was a storyline in WWE in the late 1990s where cameras were hidden backstage and showed things like Billy Gunn admiring his own ass and Mark Henry on the toilet. The plan was for the footage to lead to the return of Goldust but the idea never came to fruition.