FTR aspires to take The Pinnacle to heights not reached by a wrestling faction in decades.
Even though they've only been together for a short period of time, The Pinnacle has quickly become one of the staples of AEW programming. Despite the apparently fast nature of their bond on-screen, FTR says that this pairing was not simply thrown together.
Speaking on the Living The Gimmick podcast, both Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood explained the genuine bond that exists between Pinnacle members and why they are hopeful that this new group can grow to the same heights as The Four Horsemen and potentially beyond even what that legendary group accomplished.
“Factions, when done right, can be the best thing that has ever been in wrestling. You look at the lineage of guys like The Four Horsemen, the NWO, and all these groups that have come through. When they came through, they changed the landscape of professional wrestling because they set the world on fire. We know that with guys like Max, we know the unlimited potential of Spears -- that's another thing, you look at what Shawn Spears said on [the last episode of Dynamite] and you know how much he believes that and you know how much he wants to prove that he is as good as everybody says he is and it's not just potential. There's Talent there and he's going to tap into it. So, I mean, we just know that with the right people around us, with like-minded individuals, if we have a faction like that, we can take over anything we want,” said Cash Wheeler.
Dax continued, “Speaking on legacy, that was our driving force to do everything we've done. Whether it was in WWE or coming to AEW, it was our legacy. The guys that you see on the screen, there is a reason they're together. We just weren't thrown into the mix with those guys. Us and Spears, we've been friends for a very long time and he understands what people say about him. He knows what Twitter says and what social media has to say about him, but they don't know. The fans I have no idea how good he actually is and what he can produce. They only know what they've been told and they only know what they've seen. Fans think they're so smart and that they know everything, they don't. They know what they've been force-fed and what they've been force-fed from Shawn Spears for the last four years is not the Shawn Spears that we know and we know what he can be.
”As far as Max goes, the day we set foot in AEW, we had a connection with him and kinship with him and a friendship with him. We travel together with him, we’d go to the gym together, before The Pinnacle. Wardlow is just maybe the coolest person I've met without even trying, he’s our version of Snoop Dogg, he's just cool without even trying to be cool. I'm the complete opposite. Then, Tully ties us all together because, of course, Cash and myself have patterned and marked out over Tully Blanchard, for not just the last seven years but the last 30-odd years of our lives, and he's the glue that brings us all together. So, I think with the talent, with the mindset that Cash said, and what we all want to prove, I don't think there is going to be a better faction than The Pinnacle.”
Part of that connection that FTR has with MJF stems from their love of being students of the game and patterning themselves after Legends like Ric Flair and Nick Bockwinkel. Recently, Maxwell Jacob Friedman opened up about why he chooses these names as inspiration and why the modern way of wrestling makes him want to vomit. Learn more here.
The Pinnacle will step inside Blood & Guts against Chris Jericho and the Inner Circle on the May 5 episode of Dynamite. Fightful will have live coverage.
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