AEW star Dax Harwood recently spoke on his podcast, “FTR with Dax Harwood,” about a variety of professional wrestling topics including the future of FTR:
“I talked to Cash today on the phone. We talked about what we wanted to accomplish and the legacy, obviously, that we wanted to leave. I think we’ve left a pretty good one so far, but what we wanted to further leave. We talked about a schedule. We talked about money. We talked, literally everything. We’ve talked about this before, but it’s come down to nut cutting time, so we needed to make a decision where we wanted to go.”
“If we decide to sign a contract, if that’s what we decide to do, we don’t have to sign the contract in April. We can take a few weeks, months, you know, however long we want off if we need to. But we did need to come up with a plan, come up with a decision, and I think it’s a decision that is going to benefit us. I think it’s going to benefit my family. I think It’s going to benefit our fans as well and I think they’re going to enjoy what we decide to do. I hope they are.”
“There are gonna be some people who complain about it too and that was a thing that we talked about. If we decided to stay with AEW, so many of the other WWE fans would say that we were too afraid to go back, or if we wanted to leave a real legacy, we go to WWE and finish off at WrestleMania then be in their Hall of Fame or whatever, and they’d be mad at us for staying at a AEW. But then on the flip side, if we decided to take our career and go back to WWE, the AEW fans would say that we turned our back on the company that made us, a company that has taken care of us and allowed us to do the things that we love to do, and a company that is also ever growing, and a company that has defeated all the odds. Regardless of what anybody wants to say, it has defeated all the odds. So the fans there are passionate. I just hope that ultimately all wrestling fans can respect the decision that we make, or that we have made because it’s going to benefit us. It’s going to benefit, again, our families. I think ultimately it will benefit the legacy we want to leave.”
“I can’t legally, because there’s no pen to paper, I can’t legally say anything yet because a contract is not finished right now, but when the time comes, I think people will understand and know, and I will let them know too, where we’re going and what we’re going to do. I just hope they all respect us for it because I respect them for their opinions as well.”
Harwood also commented on Triple H not viewing them as one of his boys:
“He’s someone who changed the trajectory of my career, Cash’s career, and he did it by being a boss first, being a mentor second, and I learned, you know, I’ve said it before, we were never Hunter guys and’ll hold to that until the day we retire.”
“I do believe that we were one of his favorites, skill wise, talent wise, I think we were, but we weren’t one of the guys I think he wanted to build the company around or the brand around. I think he understood what we offered. I think he understood how, this is egotistical, but how good we were in the ring, the stories we get to tell, and I think he knew that we could be a piece to the puzzle, but I don’t think he wanted us to be the whole puzzle.”
“He loved Gargano and he loved Ciampa. He loves those guys. He loved Fergal and those were his guys. So when I say we weren’t his guys, it’s not that he wasn’t a fan of ours, or we weren’t any of his favorite in-ring guys, it’s just we weren’t the guys that I think he wanted to build the company around. Like I said, we were out for a couple of weeks. Both of us got injured. I had surgery and Ciampa was just a little banged up. Hunter would call or text him and ask, ‘How are things going?’ I had surgery and I’m sitting at home and I’m trying to rush back because we got to come back to drop the belts to Gargano and Ciampa, and I heard nothing.”
“We weren’t Hunter guys. I don’t hold any ill feelings towards him because of that. We just weren’t. But I do think that he was a fan of our work. I know he was. He told us. I think that he was a fan of us as talents. It’s just not who he necessarily wanted to build the company around.”
You can check out the complete podcast below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
