Dax Harwood has revealed that although he and cash Wheeler were happy to leave WWE, their departure came at a heavy financial cost.
Dax Harwood signed with WWE in 2012 where he was joined by Cash Wheeler. Alongside Wheeler, the pair became the company’s first ever ‘Triple Crown’ Tag Team Champions, winning the NXT, Raw and SmackDown Tag Team Championships.
The pair were released by WWE in April 2020, debuting in AEW the following month.
Speaking in a recent interview with Renee Paquette on her podcast, The Sessions, Harwood opened up about the team’s release and the events which led up to their exit. The tag team star explained that he and Wheeler’s contracts were going to be extended until August, owing to the months they had missed through injury.
However, they were told they could have their release immediately if they signed over their trademarks which were worth up to $20,000. Harwood said that they were so set on leaving that they took the deal.
“The pandemic hit, they called us, they said, ‘we know you want out, your contracts are up in two months. They were going to extend your contract because of you injury until August, but the out is, all these trademarks you have, sign them over to us and we will let you have your release, no 90 days, and we’ll give it to you today.’ We spent like $10-20,000 on trademarks,”
“Stuff that we came up with, not them, but we wanted out so bad and were unhappy, just let them have it. It’s just money. We called back and said, ‘you can have all the trademarks, just please give us our release,’ and they did.”
Harwood went on to reveal that WWE offered the team known as The Revival, plenty of money to stay, but a conversation with his grandmother made up his mind to leave.
“Money is incredible, but I talked to my grandma and I was telling her my issues, ‘I’m not happy, but the money is great.’ Her exact words to me were, ‘How much money do you really need?’ That was such an eye-opening experience to me,”
“I’m college educated, two degrees, ‘yeah, you’re exactly right.’ It sounds like I’m bitter, but I’m not at all, we just weren’t happy. Not just us, but they weren’t giving any of the tag teams the opportunity that we thought it deserved.
We knew we would be stuck at a certain position if we stayed there. For years and years, I have prayed every night to be a professional wrestler and I take it very seriously. Knowing they weren’t going to give us the opportunities that we thought we deserved, we had to get out of there.
During the conversation, Harwood also took issue with Shawn Michaels, claiming that the Hall of Famer made fun of him about a recent injury while with WWE. This was after Michaels had previously been supportive of the star who opened up about his struggles.
H/t to Fightful for the transcription.