FTR discusses All Elite Wrestling signing former WWE talent.
Originally, AEW was formed to be the alternative to WWE and many of the names that were signed to the promotion were top names from the independent circuit or Japan. Fast forward to nearly three years later, AEW is now filled with former WWE talent that is helping to grow the promotion.
One such act is FTR. Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler joined AEW during the early days of the global pandemic and have been featured near the top of the card ever since in the tag team division.
Speaking with TSN about some of the backlash the promotion gets for signing former WWE Superstars, both members of the tag team would say that they don't understand why fans get upset about this.
“There are a lot of fans, and it boggles my mind, who are upset by this,” Harwood said. “They’re upset by seeing a lot of former WWE talent [in AEW]. They’ve got to understand AEW cannot just hire independent wrestlers because if they only hire independent wrestlers for a television product, it’s almost like the blind leading the blind. You have to have people who are experienced in television wrestling because it’s a completely different beast from just professional wrestling.”
Wheeler concurred, "The people we’ve signed, they’re all signed for a reason – because they’re so good at what they do and they’re going to help everybody else in the process,” Wheeler said. So, the company gets better by signing these people. And I hate when people call them ‘ex-WWE this’ or ‘ex-WWE that’ because yeah, we’ve worked there. We’ve all worked there at some point, but that doesn’t make us their property or like we didn’t learn these things some time before that, also. We’ve all learned these things from decades of hard work, decades of putting in the grind and going all over to get good enough to where we can get jobs with the best wrestling companies in the world and it just so happens that now there’s another huge, great wrestling company and that hasn’t been around for 20-plus years. So now there’s options and there are going to be people coming over and that’s just how it’s going to be, but that doesn’t mean the company is going to be the next whatever. They’re killing it right now. They’re signing the people that need to be signed and wrestling is better because of it.”
Currently, FTR is paired with two former WWE Superstars, Andrade and Malakai Black. At AEW Full gear, all four men continued their rivalry with Cody Rhodes, PAC, and the Lucha Brothers. You can check out our live coverage of the event here.
