FTR break their silence on the reports of them being removed from AEW’s first video game.
It was recently reported by Fightful Select, that Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood of FTR were “not slated to be a part of the first version of the AEW Fight Forever game”. However, per the report, both Wheeler and Harwood were originally slated to be part of the game but were quickly removed earlier this year.
The pair recently spoke to Give Me Sport’s Louis Dangoor and addressed the widely known reports, which according to Wheeler, both were aware of:
“For us, the only real issue is we were kind of blindsided by it. We found out, not how you would expect. When you find out something like that, something major like being taken out of a video game, your mind automatically assumes the worst. For us, it was like, ‘is this something we need to worry about? Should we read between the lines here? Were we not told for a reason? Now that we are aware and we are out, what is that reason? Is it something we should worry about?’ We got an answer, it made a lot of sense, a very logical answer. Okay, cool, as long as we don’t have to worry about it, a non-issue. That’s what it was. We’ve known about it since May, June, I don’t know how long, but for months. The fact that it came out yesterday, no idea why. Don’t know exactly what happened yesterday, and don’t know why it just now became a headline, but we’ve known about it for a while, we got answers on it a while ago and for us, it’s not even an issue or thought about,” Wheeler stated.
Meanwhile, Harwood claims that he and Wheeler being removed from the game is a “non-issue” and he’s solely focused on having fun with Wheeler and providing for his wife and daughter:
“The headline (for this) can be, ‘FTR is not upset, FTR does not blame anyone for pulling us out of the game.’ We heard about this, I want to say March, it was before the Briscoes match (at ROH Supercard of Honor) and we heard about it a long time ago. I had someone message me, one of the journalists messaged me and said, ‘Is this true?’ I thought I did respond to him. The first thing I did is text Cash. ‘Have you heard about this?’ ‘No, let’s text Tony (Khan) and find out.’ We text Tony, we went through the right chain of commands. We text Tony and talked to him. Legal texted us, talked with them a bit, we got our answer, and it was a non-issue. We wanted to make sure we weren’t doing something wrong and if there was something we could do to correct that, let us know. Months later, this article comes out, I couldn’t believe it didn’t come out in March. It blindsided both of us. I don’t care to be in the video game. My worry is leaving a legacy, having fun with my best friend, and on top of all that, taking care of Maria [Wife] and Finley [Daughter].”
Wheeler noted that while it felt good to see fans come to their aid when the news broke of their departures in the game, he didn’t necessarily like people blaming one side or the other:
“Yes and no. It’s awesome to know that people care about it that much, but to see the side that does and the side that doesn’t going back and forth and having all this unnecessary blame and talking poorly about one side or poorly about the other side when really it should be a non-issue. I love that they’re upset, as far as they care about us, but I really hate the toxic environment it creates between people fighting over it because it isn’t an issue and hasn’t been. It’s cool they care about us, but I hate that it has to come at the expense of people fighting too.”
On the other hand, Harwood enjoyed fans supporting him and Wheeler because due to a tough relationship with his father, he felt true love from the fans following their face-turn in AEW:
“For me, it was very cool, and I’ll tell you this because I’ve told a lot of people this about us turning babyface. For so long in my life, before my wife, I didn’t feel loved, as corny as that sounds. I don’t think I knew exactly what the feeling of real love was because I never felt it. I had best friends and a great mom and dad, but my dad was a hard ass, he’s apologized since I’ve had my daughter, but he was a hard ass and never really showed me that love and affection. My mom was working all the time too so we never really got to connect. We were together but we never got to connect. I don’t think for so long that I knew what real love was. When we turned babyface, I got real love from the fans. That was the coolest thing to me. I’m embracing this babyface turn. I don’t care if that’s corny. To log on and see so many people upset that we had been pulled, made me feel good. That’s love.”
FTR is set to team up with TNT Champion, Wardlow against Jay Lethal and Chris Sabin, and Alex Shelley of Motor City Machine Guns, this weekend at AEW’s All Out pay-per-view.
(h/t to Fightful for the transcriptions)