wrestling / News

FTR Weigh In On Three-Way Tag Title Match At AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door, Their Time in The Pinnacle

June 24, 2022 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
AEW Dynamite FTR Image Credit: AEW

FTR have a big match ahead of them at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door, and the team discussed potentially winning the IWGP Tag Team Titles and more in a new interview. Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler spoke with the New York Post to promote Sunday’s PPV and you can see some highlights below:

On what it would mean for them to win the IWGP Tag Team Championships
Dax: This is something we thought of doing after our initial U.S. career was over or winding down. Obviously, the opportunity has arisen now. We have already stamped our names beside guys like Arn and Tully, The Midnight Express and the Hart Foundation and the British Bulldogs here in America. But in Japan, we want to put our names beside the Steiner Brothers, who held the IWGP tag team titles, (Hiroshi) Hase and (The Great) Mutoh, Bam Bam Bigelow and Vader. We want to be able to be considered on their level as well.

Cash: We called ourselves living legends for a while. One, it was to annoy people by thinking that we’re in that league and we wanted to manifest it. And for the past eight years, that’s what we’ve been working towards, out legacy. We tell everyone our legacy means more to us than anything else in this world as far as what we leave behind in this business. Now I feel like we’re obviously getting there.

On MJF’s issues with AEW and their time in the Pinnacle
Cash: I feel like we still had stuff we could have done (with the Pinnacle) or things we could have done differently. But it’s so hard to in the middle of the pandemic, even though we were starting to come out of it, the amount of stuff from the formation to the end. Even I don’t know what’s going on, if it is the end. We’ll see. I think the group still had a lot of potential. Whatever happens down the line, if that’s something they ask us what our thoughts on it are within the company, we’ll figure that out.

With Max right now, I don’t really know. I try to stay out of all the office business because I’m not very good at it and I’m not very good at hiding my emotions as it is. It’s just, I hope he gets what he wants. I know what it’s like to be in a spot where you don’t feel like where you want to be. So I hope he finds that.

Dax: You called us to talk to FTR. I’m not here to talk about Max. I don’t care what Max does. I will say this, I think the Pinnacle may be the most mishandled thing in modern wrestling history because that could have been one of the biggest angles in the world, one of the biggest groups in the world. Max and I always didn’t see eye to eye, and I’ll leave it at that.

On teaming with CM Punk and if that was headed to a trio
Cash: I really don’t know what it was heading towards. I know I liked how the chemistry felt when we did do things together. We’re friends. We’re all like-minded individuals. We all have an idea of what we think wrestling can be and how it’s not now. I think that made us drawn to each other and we can all be polarizing to an extent. There’s this common bond between all of us.

When he got here, we never had any prior experience with him, so it was a clean slate and for us he’s been nothing but great. He’s been a mentor to us. Whatever we need, he’s been there for it. I think part of our rise right now is linked to his arrival here. He’d been a guy who beat the drum for us any chance he got, and I think that holds a lot of weight. When he does come back, hell yeah, hopefully we get right back to wherever this was gonna go.

Dax: We hit it off from the very beginning. I consider him one of my best friends in the world right now. It started off with a love of wrestling. In a time where it’s hard to find people who are absolutely enamored with wrestling, the three of us are, and then it morphed into the love of Bret Hart. Then it morphed into the love of each other. Behind the scenes, I’ll be forever indebted to him for how he helped with cope with (my) anxieties, too.