Ricky Saints grades his AEW and WWE NXT runs
Ricky Saints compared and graded his AEW and NXT runs.
Speaking on Ringer Wrestling, Saints praised the women’s division in NXT and the creative liberties talents are given on the roster. He proceeded to discuss how his colleagues often approach him for advice.
“Yeah, it’s incredible only because first off, let me talk about the women’s division. I’m seeing that stuff weekly. I’m seeing them go out there and kill it weekly and and to me that’s just like this is what I was seeing in other companies before them being able to do this. Now it’s here. I think it’s a great thing for them because they’re not put in a box, so to speak. I love the creative freedom that they have about what this is and what they want to do and things of that nature. On the men’s side, it’s even crazier because I don’t see myself as that person, but I look around, I’m like, ‘Oh, there’s people coming to me for advice. There’s people talking to me about what should I do.’”
Saints was asked to rank his AEW and NXT tenures. He explained that he was grateful for contributions to his former promotion and graded it a B while NXT a B+.
“Dang, that’s hard. I love my run at AEW for all intents and purposes. You can say whatever you want about the other stuff but I think when you look at it in a totality form, I did enjoy it, just wanted more out of it. I think I would give it like a B. Maybe a B. Cause I have to remove certain personal things of accomplishments that I wanted that I didn’t necessarily get. I gotta remove that. I gotta look at what the actual work was. What actually was done. And now when we compare that to NXT, I would give my NXT run, just because I’m a perfectionist, I’d give it a B+. We’re edging out an A. I’m still doing it.”
Despite exiting AEW in 2025, Saints competed in his last match on the promotion nearly a year earlier. He debuted on NXT in February 2025.
Ahead of SNME in December, Saints and Oba Femi battled it out at Deadline for the NXT Championship. The additional stakes were that the winner would face Cody Rhodes at the special WWE event. Saints and Femi officially appeared on SmackDown the week before to greet Rhodes.
Rosanne Raphael is a wrestling writer with over three and a half years of experience covering all things related to the industry. From a kindergarten teacher to PR Associate to turning her lifelong passion for the industry into a career, Rosanne is currently writing for F4W Online where she focuses on wrestling news, analysis, and storytelling.
Rosanne previously contributed to Sportskeeda as an Assistant Content Manager.
When not consumed by wrestling, Rosanne is a musician and an aspiring artist.