Dax Harwood recently spoke about his pay on the WWE main roster.
On his new podcast, FTR with Dax Harwood, the former WWE wrestler spoke about his time on the main roster and the realities of the expenses that come with the schedule in comparison to what he was paid: (Transcriptions by Andrew Thompson)
If you look back at 2019, I was number one, Baron [Corbin] and Cash [Wheeler] were tied for number two as far as most matches in 2019 for WWE and so we were on the road every single week, four days a week, five days a week, and so when you think I’ve signed this million dollar contract or whatever, it’s not that lucrative. Our contracts were at the very bottom dollar. I mean, I’ll tell you mine. I don’t know about Cash’s. But our first contract for the main roster was $125, $150, $175 (thousand) across the three years and that was it.
No expenses at all… There’s the potential of making more than that and breaking that $125 barrier and that $125 ceiling with merch and pay-per-views and stuff like that and house shows as well but that’s what we had signed and that is a lot of money, that’s a lot of money to me right now but you gotta think about it, if I’m on the road five days a week, and I’m spending breakfast, lunch and dinner all five days a week, let’s not even talk about snacks or whatever. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, five days a week on the road while my wife is at home cooking and paying for groceries for her and my daughter and then I’m paying for rental cars and then I’m paying for hotels. I’m not making as much money as you think… When I heard a lot of the fans say, ‘They could’ve just sat back and had catering and made their money,’ it’s not that simple. Money is one thing but there’s always been something that I wanted to do for professional wrestling and being there at that time was not gonna allow me to do that.
In the spring of 2019, WWE introduced the 24/7 Championship as a comedy-based championship that could be defended at any time and resulted in multiple time changes on a weekly basis.
In the summer of 2019, Dax and partner Dash Wilder/Cash Wheeler won the championship together after pinning R-Truth during a segment on Raw in Toronto before immediately losing it back to R-Truth in the same segment.
Dax reflected on the title and lack of desire to be associated with it:
Obviously, wasn’t too happy (about becoming WWE 24/7 Champion) and I know a lot of people are gonna say, ‘Oh, big surprise. You’re not happy.’ There was a lot of things we still wanted to accomplish as a tag team (in WWE). I mean, in 2023, there are still a lot of things we wanna accomplish as a tag team. But, being co-24/7 Champions was not on our bucket list of things to do so, that championship was taken as a joke. It was some comic relief of a two-hour television show and I would have much rather not have it. I don’t want that on my résumé, I don’t even want to bring it up. I should have told you (show co-host) off-air not to bring it up. But, you know, here we are.
The full episode can be heard on FTR with Dax Harwood.
