FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler) battled The Briscoes (Mark & Jay Briscoe) three times in 2022 beginning with a classic tag team match at ROH Super Card of Honor, escalating with a two-out-of-three falls match at ROH Death Before Dishonor, and culminating with a dog collar match at ROH Final Battle.
The first match received rave reviews and was run back quicker than originally planned in the two-out-of-three falls bout.
Feeling the pressure to live up to the first match, FTR and the Briscoes took the edge off ahead of the second bout.
"Before the match, we were all scrambling our brains because we were worried, 'what if we don't deliver this time? What if we don't match up what we did before? What if we don't come close to matching up? That could be the end of our careers.' We were all so worried. This was a couple of hours before the show. I said, 'Hey, do you want to take a shot before the match? Maybe it'll loosen us up and get our creative juices flowing.' Mark and Jay are like, 'Fuck yeah.' They were like waiting for me to say it. As wrestlers, besides that one time, I've never ever had a drink before a match. You don't want to go in there and hurt your opponent or mess up, but the four of us were under the impression that we needed it, and we all had it, and we started talking and started feeling good. Jay says, 'What if we take one more?' They had never had Clase. 'Okay, let's do it.' We take another drink, we're sipping on it, we're putting together what we think is a great match. We're laughing and having fun. Someone speaks up and says, 'Let's do one more.' We have 45 minutes to go. We gotta do one more. We did another one and by the time I realized it, we had drank half the bottle of Clase before the match. We were putting the match together, having fun, talking about our families, telling stories. Then we'd go back to the match, get out of it, laughing and having fun," Dax recalled on his FTR podcast with Matt Koon.
When asked if anyone caught them drinking, Dax said there was someone, but didn't name who.
"That person understood that the four of us trusted each other enough that nothing was going to happen and we could stop ourselves. Going out to the match, we're walking to the curtain, and we're still putting stuff together," Dax said before saying he was proud of the match.
FTR was victorious in the two-out-of-three falls match, retaining the ROH Tag Team Championships. The Briscoes would close the trilogy with a victory in the dog collar match to regaining the titles.
Sadly, Jay Briscoe passed away on January 17 in a car accident. Mark will make his AEW Dynamite debut on Wednesday when he faces Jay Lethal.
A donation page was set up for the Pugh family. Fans can donate by clicking here. AEW released a memorial shirt on Monday with 100% of the proceeds going to the Pugh family.
The full episode of FTR with Dax will be available on Thursday, January 26. Fans can subscribe to the podcast channel by clicking here.
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