Mark Davis Says Aussie Open’s Match With FTR At Royal Quest II Was ‘Pretty Pivotal’ To Their Growth

Mark Davis reflects on a big match that he and Kyle Fletcher competed in against FTR at NJPW Royal Quest II in 2022.

In 2022, as Aussie Open (Davis and Fletcher) continued to grow as a tag team, they would be booked to face off with FTR at NJPW Royal Quest II in October. Despite Aussie Open leaving with a loss, they did win in other ways according to Davis.

While speaking to Jeremy Lambert and SP3 on Fightful Overbooked’s In The Weeds podcast, Mark Davis spoke about the bout between FTR and Aussie Open at the NJPW special show in the UK.

“I think it was pretty pivotal, to be quite honest with you. I think that Dax and Cash are two of the hardest-hitting sumbitches. They’re very proud. They take a lot of pride. The professional wrestling that they do and present and the way that they are in the ring is phenomenal. I know that’s them that’s FTR, that’s them 24/7, they’re locked in. That’s who they are as human beings. They’re very respectable, commandable, and for us (Aussie Open), it was just kind of this- it just kind of it felt like it funneled towards this, like, moment. We had built our name on the UK scene for such a long time. We were just about to step towards going to New Japan, competing in the World Tag League, and it would have been, you know, an opportunity to step in as champions there, which would have been great for us, but just as like a precursor to stepping into that system, that scene that, you know, into Japan, into New Japan, to face two of the very best in what I would have considered at that point, our home turf. They were kind of like walking in as the outsiders to fight us on our home turf, and I think the crowd, the audience, the atmosphere really did lend itself to that. For me, it just, I mean, people will talk about lightning in a bottle. They’ll talk about when wrestling’s great, it’s the best, and that is one of those moments for me personally, where it did feel like everything coalesced into a moment and what we gave people was, you know, on par with what they expected. So it was.. it was unfortunate that we couldn’t take the W in the match, but as just like a step, like a dipping out time into the pool to be like, okay, this is the next step, the next stage in our careers and where we’re going to work towards next. It was, it was a very cool, very like fulfilling feeling.”

Elsewhere in the same interview, Mark spoke about Kyle Fletcher going to a bald look. You can read more about that here.