Before Ethan Page was all about “never letting go of his ego” in AEW, the co-owner of The Firm was a member of The North, one of the most dominant tag teams in the history of Impact Wrestling and of this current generation, period, alongside Josh Alexander. Initially dubbed the Monster Mafia – a name that is very early 2010s – they were repackaged in Impact as The North to capitalize on the hype around the Toronto Raptors and Game of Thrones, and went on a tear in the Impact Zone, winning the promotion's top tag team honors on two occasions for a combined 401-day reign, with wins over LAX, The Rascalz, and The WorkHorsemen.
Dubbed one of the teams FTR wanted to wrestle when they officially became free agents from WWE, the team quietly dissolved in 2020 when Page opted to sign with AEW following his very weird final match at Hard to Kill 2021 between his “All Ego” character and his “Karate Man” alter ego, and the duo haven't shared a wrestling ring since as either friends or foes.
So what gives? Is the absence of The North reunions, even just on the indies, intentional, or is this just a case of the logistics never working out for the long-time team to get back together? Fortunately, Alexander was asked this very question on The Wrestling Perspective with Dennis Ferrell and Lars Frederiksen of Rancid, and needless to say, the answer was fascinating.
Josh Alexander doesn't expect a reunion with his friend-turned-AEW star.
Working through the entire wrestling career of Alexander, Ferrell and Frederiksen wanted to touch on The North and whether or not the duo would be willing to get back together in the ring once more.
“Probably not,” Alexander said via Fightful. “No, I wouldn't imagine I would. I think that The North run would have continued to go for at least, you know, a year, year and a half before we kind of split up and did, because like eventually everything runs its course, you know, I know there's like FTR and The Young Bucks and these tag teams that stayed together forever, but then you looked at me and him and we were both individuals that came together and we made a great tag team because we had chemistry and all this other stuff, but you know, I think at some point it would have come to an end, but I don't think it would materialize fast enough for me to be a world champion sitting here right now.”
“I think it was a little bit of both. His contract was up a year before mine. I signed exactly a year after him. We both signed three-year deals, and his came up, and he was pretty vocal that he wanted to go elsewhere. He ended up going elsewhere, which was fine, but at the same time, we’ve been a tag team for about 10 years. We were successful in the Indies when we came to Impact. We took over that entire scene, and we found all the success in the world as a tag-team, and like I said, I think all good things run their course.”
Whoa, that's a pretty big admission. Did the duo leave on bad terms? In a way, yes, as, according to Alexander, the duo haven't talked since.
“Eventually, we were both two individuals, with two separate goals in two separate mindsets on pro wrestling, that began to clash toward the end, there,” Alexander said. “Where we weren't really getting along to the point where, you know, the friendship kind of broke away. So we went our separate way, and he's found all the success in the world at AEW. I'm sure he's happy, and you know, I'm doing what I'm doing and we're good. We haven't really communicated since he left the company. I saw him at a signing here or there. It's like, hey, how are you doing? Things are good. Yeah, I hope they're good. Like there's no ill will or anything. It's just, we're in separate sandboxes doing separate things with separate goals, and you know that’s it.”
Asked if anyone in Impact and/or AEW broached the idea of reuniting the team for some sort of Forbidden Door event, Alexander shot it down.
“I don’t. I think other people have the thought, I don't think anybody within management of the company, neither Ethan Page nor myself, had the thought that that was ever gonna materialize or be a thing,” Alexander concluded. “I've said it before, I think an FTR match would’ve been cool, but other than that, I honestly think it ran its course with the tag team and stuff.”
Needless to say, Page hasn't been painted in this bad of a light since his interaction with Brandi Rhodes back on Dynamite in February, where the CBO of AEW asserted that the company only signed “All Ego” to get to Alexander, who has since gone on to win the Impact World Championship belt on two occasions since his partner left the promotion.
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