In the much anticipated debut episode of FTR with Dax Harwood, Harwood focused on his friend, CM Punk.
As good of friends as they’ve become, they didn’t actually meet until Punk came to work for AEW. Harwood had a preconceived notion of his new co-worker and thought Punk would say something about his clothes. Punk didn’t and Harwood realized he was wrong about him.
Dax Harwood on WWE and AEW locker rooms
When asked if there’s less communication because AEW flies its talent in weekly versus traveling together for days at a time, Harwood says no. “I don’t think there’s less communication in comparison to WWE. I think there had been times where wrestlers have leaked that to the dirt sheets for whatever reason, but they’ve never experienced wrestling outside of independents; I have. In WWE, at the time that I was there — it could’ve changed now — there was no communication at all. Even up til the start time of the show, communication was very hit or miss.”
“So, I don’t think there’s a lack of communication there. As far as politics go, the political game in WWE was not bad at all. The boys got along great. I think the girls got along great as well. There was no real political maneuvering there in WWE. I think the problems were between the office and the boys. That’s where the problems were.”
“In AEW, I don’t think there’s a lot of politics there either, to be honest. The boys have a male locker room and the people who share that locker room, share a bond and share a kinship and every single day — and I think you could ask anybody — every single day, myself or myself and Cash bring a bottle of tequila and we have drinks with the guys, just to make that camaraderie even stronger. To make the kinship even stronger. So, I don’t think there’s any political games as far as that goes.”
Competition with the Young Bucks
“I think that when you’re in a position of power, obviously — even when you’re not in a position of power — you’re going to look out for your best interests because no one else is going to look out for your interests the way you are. But, when you’re in a position of power, you’re allowed to look out for your best interest and more often than not you’re allowed to get it. But again, playing politics; I don’t know if that’s what you call it.”
“(…) I feel like there’s that competition between us and the Young Bucks. I think it’s a healthy thing because that’s why our 2022 was so great because we didn’t know what we were going to get. We didn’t know what opportunities were going to come our way. We knew and had made a promise at the end of 2021, that whatever we got, we were going to kill it and we were going to have fun doing it. And so whenever you have competition, some things could be misconstrued as political agendas, but more often than not, you’re just trying to compete and be better than everyone else.”
FTR will be facing Bishamon (Hirooki Goto and YOSHI-HASHI) for the IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Titles on January 4, 2023 at Wrestle Kingdom 17.
