One-half of FTR speaks about the response to his podcast.
In the span of a month, FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler) have lost the ROH World, AAA World and IWGP Tag Team Championships. The duo has yet to appear on AEW programming since losing to The Gunns (Austin & Colten Gunn) at Holiday Bash.
The newest episode of ‘FTR with Dax Harwood’ was pushed out and he updated listeners on the future of the team. Dax stated that they’ve been given the next few months off of television and they’ll decide on their next move come April when their deals expire or before then.
Dax added that he does not see himself wrestling in five years so whatever comes next is the last of what he’ll do as an active in-ring performer.
I talked to Cash [Wheeler] and I asked him if he would be comfortable with me talking about this on my podcast and he said, ‘Yes, absolutely.’ So, we dropped the Ring of Honor Tag Team Championships to The Briscoes, we dropped the AAA Tag Team Championships to Dralístico and Dragon Lee and we dropped the IWGP Tag Team Championships to [Hirooki] Goto and YOSHI-HASHI and with that is a new slate for 2023. I’ve also got the blessing of Tony Khan to talk about this and make a statement about this. Tony has been nothing but top notch to me and Dan since day one. There are things we haven’t agreed on as any boss and any employee and even any friend, you know? There are times that I felt the boat was missed on opportunities for us, there was times that I was super happy with everything we were doing. But, there has come a time, we’re on the tail end of our career, okay? I’m 38-years-old, I talked last week about how hard it is for me to play with my daughter and things like that. We’re on the tail end of our career now and so I think right now, this point in our career is the most important time in our career. I mean that monetarily, I mean that creatively, I mean that personally. It is the most important part, most important time of our career. With that being said, we have asked and been granted the next few months off of television so we can sit back, reflect, decide, let our bodies heal and figure out what we are going to do for the next few years because whatever we decide to do next will be the absolute last thing we do, period, as far as wrestling. I don’t see myself, after I’m done with whatever we’re gonna decide next, I don’t see myself in five years going on independents and wrestling independents. I don’t see myself working in five years; a Japan tour or a Mexico tour or traveling around the world and wrestling all over places. That’s why these next few months are the most important few months for us. April, by April, at least, at most, we will have an answer. But now, again, I have to take in my health, I have to take in my family, I have to take in my creativity and I have to take my personal life all into consideration about what we’re gonna do next. I know what I want to do. But whatever we do, I just wanted to be respected.
So, that’s my news is we are going to be away for a little while. I’m not sure exactly how long we’ll be away. It may be up all the way up until the end of our contracts, I don’t know yet… Contract is up in April… Yeah, yeah (Cash & I have the same length on our contracts). As soon as WWE let us go, we had mutually parted ways. As soon as they let us go, got with Tony and we immediately signed a contract then. So I’m not exactly sure on the exact date. Our ‘gimmick attorney’ Mike Dockins would know that. But it will be somewhere in the beginning of April. So I don’t know if you’ll see us back at all on TV before that. But, that’s our plan right now.
Further expanding on their collective futures, Dax said he’s going to sit down with Cash and discuss everything they need to. Outside of wrestling, they are looking at buildings to open up a wrestling school and they want to open a coffee shop as well.
There’s a lot of things I have to weigh (about the future of FTR) and it’s not because I’m trying to skate around it. I really honestly can’t give you a direct answer because, one, my answer is going to have to correlate with what Dan [Cash Wheeler] says. If Dan says, ‘No, we’re f*cking going,’ then he and I are gonna sit down, we’re gonna weigh the pros and cons and we’re gonna come to a mutual agreement because that’s what we’ve done for ten years. We’ve never got in an argument, we’ve never once had a cross word and we’re not gonna start now so he and I, that’s why we’re taking these next however long off so we can sit down, he can come to North Carolina and stay at his house. We can go to coffee shops. I mean, another thing too, I can put this out there, we are looking into buildings for a pro wrestling school as well. That’s one of our things we want to open up. We also have ideas for more real estate together, and also for a future coffee shop so there are a lot of things we’re gonna be talking about for the next few months. But, at the top of that list is our future and yeah, I don’t know how long this is gonna be, but it will have to be before the beginning of April.
Earlier in the conversation, Harwood expressed his thoughts about there being people in AEW who are allegedly upset with his past comments on the podcast pertaining to The Elite (Kenny Omega, Matt & Nick Jackson) and CM Punk.
Harwood stated that the reaction he got from colleagues were positive, but there could be those who are unhappy he was ‘telling the truth’ about The Elite and Punk respectively. He added that it did hurt to hear people are supposedly upset with him.
Nah, I haven’t heard anything about it (people being upset about the podcast). No, of course I’ve heard about it. Everybody’s tweeted me and text me and that’s all I read. Um, yeah, apparently there’s some people in the AEW locker room were unhappy with my podcast and that’s okay if they were, but to me it’s funny that I talk to you (podcast co-host) and I told you even before this stuff got out, I told you I had at the very least, 20 text messages from the guys and girls that I worked with who told me how much they love the podcast, how much they enjoyed my thoughts and feelings and how I expressed wrestling and they also enjoyed the fact that I didn’t play either side and that I just told the truth. So for some of the people that are upset with me, I wonder why they’re upset because all I did was paint a company that I’m in love with or that I believe in-in a positive light and all I did was paint a few people that were in the news in a positive light because in the core, I believe that they all are good people. But, I guess some people weren’t happy that I was maybe expressing the true human being that CM Punk is or maybe they were unhappy that I was expressing the true human beings that The Young Bucks or Kenny [Omega] or whoever was, maybe that’s it too.
So for anybody that’s upset with me, I implore them to please come to me as I would come to you face-to-face and talk to you and tell you how I feel. To all the people from AEW and even all the people, a ton of people from WWE, who downloaded my two episodes, who retweeted my two episodes, who put over the fact that I was well-spoken, I was fair, that I was truthful and the passion, more than anything, the passion that I have for professional wrestling. That’s all I have and that’s all I can tell and that’s all I can portray is what I love and how much I love this because there ain’t too many things in the world, people included, human beings included that I love more than wrestling and so for people to reach out to tell me that and then, God dang man, then I read that people at my locker room is unhappy with me… For someone who has mental health struggles, that did hurt a little bit but then I had to take a step back, I talked with you, I talked with Cash [Wheeler] and they reminded me, you reminded me that it’s not everybody. It’s probably a handful of people.
The multi-time Tag Team Champion went on to apologize to anyone who was upset about what he said. He squashed the narrative that Punk could be using him as a soundboard but Dax said Punk has never encouraged him to say anything about him on the podcast. He recalled Punk telling him that he’s never listened to an episode.
For the first narrative about [CM] Punk, I can give you 100 percent God’s honest truth, he has never told me to say anything. He’s never expressed to me that he wants me to paint a certain narrative about him. I can also tell you to God’s honest truth that he told me, he said, ‘I haven’t even listened to your podcast.’ Guys, he’s a beautiful human being, The Young Bucks are beautiful human beings, okay? All of them are. All I was trying to do was make things right, that’s all. That’s the only thing I was trying to do. Maybe I went too far or maybe it’s not for me to make right. But, in the moment, as a human being who has a heart, who loves wrestling, I tried to make things right and that was all. If I was wrong for that and I upset those guys and even if I upset Punk, I sincerely apologize. If I upset my office, I sincerely apologize. If I upset anybody else who’s letting Dave Meltzer know that the locker room is upset with me, if I upset that person, I sincerely apologize, that was not my goal. My goal was to make AEW better, that’s all.
Dax and Cash joined AEW in May 2020. To hear a throwback review of that episode of Dynamite, head over to this link.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit FTR with Dax Harwood with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
