Effy replacing Ricky Starks at GCW Highest in the Room

Game Changer Wrestling has named a replacement for the match Ricky Starks was supposed to have at Highest in the Room 3.

Before being pulled from all of his scheduled GCW appearances, Starks was set to face Matt Cardona at the Saturday, December 14 event in Los Angeles. GCW announced today that the match will now be Cardona vs. Effy.

Starks made a surprise appearance for GCW last weekend and was going to work a series of dates for the promotion. However, he has since been pulled from all of those shows. Fightful reported that AEW’s decision to pull Starks was, in part, due to comments Effy made about Tony Khan and Shad Khan on his podcast.

“While nobody officially said anything, the strong belief, actually confirmed to us, is that it was the comments from Effy of GCW on Tony Khan, particularly a line he said about Khan’s father paying [Tony] to stay away, led to Khan feeling he didn’t want to do business with GCW,” Dave Meltzer wrote in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

Effy was critical of AEW after the promotion announced three dates for the Hammerstein Ballroom near the end of December — running the venue just a few weeks before GCW’s upcoming event at the Hammerstein. That January 19 show is one of the other GCW dates Starks was scheduled for.

GCW owner Brett Lauderdale told the Business of the Business podcast that he feels AEW “maybe” violated some written etiquette by booking their Hammerstein dates so close to GCW’s show.

Despite being healthy and under contract, Starks has been missing from AEW programming since March. He told Insight with Chris Van Vliet that the experience of being kept off TV has been a “mindf*ck.” Starks said he has theories about why he isn’t being used but does not want to voice them because he does not know for sure. While not confirmed, most fan speculation about Starks’ absence has been centered on a belief that he will eventually end up in WWE when his AEW contract expires.

The Ukrainian Cultural Center in Los Angeles is hosting GCW Highest in the Room with the event set to stream live on TrillerTV+. A Bloodsport match between Josh Barnett and Royce Isaacs is among the other bouts that will be taking place on the show.