FTR on Helping Randy Orton Train for His Backlash Match, How Training With Edge Before His Return Came About

– As previously reported, FTR (Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood) recently revealed that they helped Randy Orton train and prepare for his match with Edge at WWE Backlash, which was billed as the “Greatest Wrestling Mach Ever.” Fightful recently spoke to the tag team on the topic. Wheeler and Harwood also spoke on helping Edge with his training before his eventual return to the ring earlier this year. Below are some highlights.

Dax Harwood on training with Randy Orton for his Backlash match: “Randy respected our work. He respected our work ethic. I mean, even to the point—I don’t know he wants me to tell this, but he can’t get too mad at me ‘cause he loves us—he flew down to Ashville to work with us for his greatest match of all time or whatever at Backlash because he wanted to get ready and he wanted to get his technical wrestling down and things like that. So, we created a bond, a friendship. I wish they would have went with it, but they didn’t. Maybe I’m glad they didn’t because now we’re having the time of our lives.”

Cash Wheeler on helping Edge train before his return to the ring at Tom Prichard’s school: “We played both sides. It was all us and Edge. He went down first, actually. I went down a year before Edge even competed. At Tom’s school.”

Cash Wheeler on how Edge started training again in Asheville, North Carolina: “That was a different time, that was Beth [Phoenix] and Natalya. They wanted to work on tag stuff so that the WrestleMania match. But, he went down after that just him and Adam [Copeland, aka Edge] with Dr. Tom letting them in. Like, that was the first time Adam had bumped since the neck injury, basically. He’d done a spear here or there, but he was the first one to get in the ring with him.”

Wheeler on training with Edge to not take it easy on him: “When I went it was just something where that was all us. I told him, ‘If you want to get in the ring, you need to get some work and to see how you feel, then just let me know.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, I need to.’ He’s like, ‘I’m lucky I have a Hall of Famer for a wife, she can do a lot with me. But, I need to get thrown around. I need to get picked up and dropped.’ He’s like, ‘She’s my wife, I’m the father of her children. So, she’s gonna take it easy on me here and there because she doesn’t want to do this on her own. So, I need somebody that’s gonna come in and take the kiddy gloves off.’ So, we went in, we called stuff on the fly. We were just wrestling around, we weren’t taking any bumps or anything yet. I put him in a sleeper, have him send me off. I come back, grab it again, slip behind him. I said, ‘Belly-to-back.’ He goes, ‘Huh?’ and we just go up and down, and that was the first big bump he had taken and he was like, ‘Oh, man. I’m glad you didn’t tell me that was coming, but I needed that.’ ‘Cause he hit, {Cash stretches his neck}, ‘I feel great.’ That was just something we wanted to do because he wanted to see how he felt and prove to himself that he could do it.”