After spending much of 2022 carrying plenty of gold, Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler of FTR began 2023 by losing the IWGP Tag Team Championships and now have no gold to their name.
FTR had reigned as triple champions during a stellar year in 2022 and cemented themselves as one of the best tag teams working in professional wrestling today. But after dropping the AAA and ROH World Tag Team Championships in recent weeks, Harwood and Wheeler’s losing streak continued at Wrestle Kingdom 17.
FTR lost the last of their championships at NJPW’s biggest show of the year after suffering a loss to Bishamon, the team of Yoshi-Hashi and Hiroki Goto.
However, Dax Harwood has revealed that FTR’s incredible 2022 almost didn’t happen at all, with his tag partner Cash Wheeler almost stepping away from the business altogether at the start of the year.
Cash Wheeler Told Dax Harwood – “I Don’t Think I Want To Do This Anymore”
Speaking on his ‘FTR with Dax Harwood’ podcast, the former Scott Dawson revealed a conversation he had with Wheeler going into 2022 where his partner told him he didn’t want to wrestle anymore.
At the time, Wheeler was recovering from a scary injury, after receiving a significant laceration to his forearm in a match against Santana and Ortiz, when the emotional conversation took place. Harwood revealed:
“Going into 2022 Cash and I had the conversation where you know, I was on the tail end-ish of my anxiety. And he had just, you know, got his forearm ripped to shreds where he almost bled to death. And he called me, you know, after the forearm thing, it was about a week later, he decided to go home and hang out at his home here in North Carolina. And he called me and I hope he doesn’t mind me telling this but he called me, he was crying. And he said ‘I don’t think I want to do this anymore.’”
Dax continued:
“I was like ‘what do you mean, do this.’ He said ‘I don’t think I want to wrestle anymore.’ And I said ‘What? Please tell me where you’re coming from.’ He said ‘look, you’ll be fine. You know, your contract, and my contract, they are not intertwined.’ We had two separate contracts. You know, and he said some very nice things about me. And I said ‘dude do it I don’t want to do this without you.”
After a deep heart-to-heart conversation, Harwood revealed that the pair agreed to see out the remainder of their AEW contracts and just have fun doing whatever they are given:
“I said, we’ll have fun, we’ll spend the rest of this contract, which I think was a year and a half. And whatever they give us, we’ll have fun doing. If he doesn’t give us anything, that’s okay, too. We won’t complain about it. We’ll enjoy each other’s company, we’ll, you know, go out to dinner, whatever, watch wrestling.”
Harwood and Wheeler’s AEW contracts reportedly expire in April 2023 and Harwood recently claimed he is ‘unsure’ what the future holds for FTR.
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