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FTR, Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler, are on a run of lifetime.
The duo currently holds the Ring of Honor and Lucha Libre AAA tag team championships and can add the IWGP titles to their collection when they face Jeff Cobb and Great-O-Khan and Rocky Romero and Trent Beretta in a winner-take-all match at AEW and New Japan’s joint pay-per-view, Forbidden Door, from the United Center on Sunday (8 p.m., Bleacher Report).
Over the past 10 months they put on critically acclaimed matches against the teams of Sting and Darby Allin, CM Punk and Jon Moxley, The Briscoes and the Young Bucks, had their first match against each other and watched Harwood enjoy some singles success. With a chance to add their seventh different tag title on Sunday, FTR took time for some Q&A with The Post’s Joseph Staszewski.
(Edited for clarity and length)
Q: What would it mean for your legacy to add the IWGP tag team titles? It feels like once you get to holding three titles at once you start being considered belt collectors.
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.
We want to go down as the best to ever do it. We’re the number one contender – the longest reigning number one contenders ever — for the fourth title. It would make us two-time AEW tag team champions. If we can do that, I think there is no doubt where our names go.
Q: Do you guys feel like this is the best run of your career? It feels like with the variety of opponents, doing it in different promotions. What’s made this one stand out for you?
Dax: I think for so long the fans have actually wanted to cheer us. I think they’ve had a respect for us and they were just booing us because they thought they were supposed to because we were the bad guys. I think it got to the point where they’re like, ‘Man, we like them so much we don’t want to boo them, but we’re supposed to.’ So the reactions weren’t what they could be be. Now we’ve invited them in, and I think inviting them in and allowing them to be part of this run has allowed us to shine even brighter.
Cash: I think there was a begrudging respect that started to form a few years ago because no matter what we did or how we acted in the ring, I think the fans knew when we came out there we were always going to work as hard as we could for them. We were never gonna phone it in. No matter what we were given, we were going to try to get the most out of it whether you loved it or not. And we just believed in ourselves, and I think over time people started to warm up to that.
Dax: The catalog of matches we’ve had for the last 10 or 12 months could be written in history itself. We were just fortunate enough to have a whole other catalog from years before.
Cash: There was that begrudging respect and we stopped trying to shut that out. We started to want to have fun with it, letting them enjoy what we do because we wanted to start having fun. If anything changed about our style, it’s that we started wrestling more like ourselves and stopped trying to wrestle a style we felt like we needed to be. Something that stayed true to us and fit modern day.
Q: The singles match you had occurred because it was the Owen Hart tournament, but it feels like with what you’re talking about, that it might have been the perfect time to have it because it allowed the fans to really enjoy it in a way they would not have if you were still heels. Did it add to the satisfaction of that match?
Cash: I think it did because we didn’t have to go out there and worry about how we make them boo us. We could just go out there and pay respect to a guy we looked up to our whole lives. I just wanted to have the best wrestling match that I could have with my best friend. I think it made it a lot easier that we were already nicer than we’ve been. It gave it a different element because the fans were happier and having fun with us.
Q: Dax, that was part of a cool singles run that you’ve been on with Punk, Adam Cole and now Will Ospreay. What has it meant for you to show people that side of you and have it be as well-received as it’s been?
Dax: I’ve been able to prove what I thought for a very long time that I’m in the discussion with the top wrestlers in the world. More than that, I just wanted to bring more notoriety to us. That was the whole reason to have these matches and also because of my honor, because of my pride.
Me going in this singles run has allowed me to bring more notoriety to FTR so people can say, ‘Holy s—t, these guys are as good as they said they are for the last eight to 10 years.’ With that, I’m also able to say that tag team wrestling is the s—t. Tag team wrestling is better than anything else in their world because if I can go and have what I perceive to be a five-star tag team match and then the very next week go and have what I perceive to be a five-star singles match that means tag team wrestlers – the one’s who are smart — are better than any singles wrestlers in the world, and I’ll stand by that.
Q: What’s your guys’ overall reaction to seeing what’s played out with MJF and what was your time like working with him 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.
Q: Before CM Punk got hurt it felt like the three of you had something brewing maybe as a loose trio. What were you guys hoping that was heading for, and would you like to pick that up again when he comes back?
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.
Q: Is there something you really feel like he’s made an impact on with you?
Dax: This is our time. This is FTR’s time. There is no one in the world – except for Bret Hart, of course – I would put above us in any totem pole or pecking order. I think me and Cash and Punk are all on an even playing field. We go to each other for wrestling advice. We go to each other and ask questions.
Outside of the ring, he knows because I told him, subconsciously he helps me so much. He invites me to hang out and we watch wrestling together. We talk and we share coffee, food. That’s the thing that I needed to help whenever I was going through troubled times. That’s what I needed, someone to get over that anxiety. He really did and now I’m on the other side of it.
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Q: What will you guys take away the most from having Bret Hart manage you?
Cash: Between being able to do this with my best friend and to pay respect and give flowers to a guy like Bret and have the fans just that emotionally invested in it, it doesn’t get any better than that. That’s stupid to think it’s such a little thing, but now we’re here.
Dax: Everyone was there to see Bret Hart and FTR together. It was the greatest night of my career. This was the man who saved me and helped me through my childhood and made me become a wrestler. I am able to take care of my wife and my daughter and put food on the table and a roof over their head. That means more to me than anything.
He told me, ‘I just wanted to tell you, I owe you guys.’ I said, ‘Oh gosh, stop it immediately. You don’t owe us anything,’ He said, ‘I haven’t gotten reactions like that in a long time. The same people have seen me, but over the last five, six months you guys and Punk bringing my name up and reminding people of my body of work has made me even more valuable. Now people are respecting me and they’re looking at my work again and that means the world to me.’ That’s something I’ll take forever.
Q: Sunday is the first time you be in the ring with Jeff Cobb and Great-O-Khan. What do you expect with your style meshing with theirs?
Cash: They are a team we’ve been wanting to work with because any team that is held in a high regard, any team that is in discussion for best in this company, best in that company, we take that personally because we want to be the best tag team in wrestling bar none regardless of what company, what banner, or where you’re at. Right now, they’re the champions, and we want their titles. If we can go in there and beat O-Khan and Cobb then that just puts us on top of another list and gives us our seventh (distinct) title, that seventh star. That’s something no one can argue with or take away from us.
Dax: I say this humbly: For so long, Japanese wrestling has always been looked at as the superior form of professional wrestling, and it may be and that’s OK. But when you’re wrestling in the biggest wrestling company in Japan and you hold their tag team championships obviously that’s not going to sit well with us because we want to prove we’re the best. Sunday going in there gives us a chance to show hell yeah, wrestling in Japan is incredible, it’s hard-hitting and it’s some of the best in the world, some of the best of all time, but Cash and I belong in that same discussion and we belong at the top of that discussion.