When Adam Copeland joined FTR at the end of Worlds End to signify the start of a new faction worthy of battling Jon Moxley and the Death Riders, it felt like a big deal.

Suddenly, three of the biggest stars in AEW were back, and with Fight for the Fallen coming to their collective hometown, Ashville, North Carolina, in January, the timing felt right for a massive moment for hurricane relief.

But is this a one-off pairing or something bigger? Well, as it turns out, the roots of this friendship run deep, with Copeland actually helping to discover Cash Wheeler before he even linked up with FTR in WWE.

“Yeah you know Cash, Daniel, sorry, he worked at Gold's Gym and I had just moved to Ashville and for about six months I trained there and eventually one of the trainers came up to me and said, ‘You know he's a wrestler, right?' And I was like, ‘What?' So I went up to him and said, you know, if you're a wrestler, why didn't you tell me? Send me some matches. And then he did, and then he sent me matches and I was like, whoa! You're good like you're not just good, you're good,” Copeland revealed to reporters.

“And then, you know, it all kind of fell into place from there, and then they started teaming and I saw them team for the first time and I said, ‘Oh my god, these guys, they've got it. They know it. They get it. They can have a great match with anyone.' So yeah, I'm going to latch onto that as much as I can. But I do also… man, it's going to be a blast. like, you've got real life friends out there and that translates.”

Wow, talk about a very interesting piece of wrestling lore. While the genesis of the group, initially called The Revival and then FTR, is pretty well established, this Ashville origin ushered on by a chance meeting at Golds Gym really does add a sense of realism to this new pairing and the ceiling they could have moving forward.

What does the future hold for “Rated-FTR” in AEW? Will they go for Moxley's AEW World Title and tag team gold, which is currently held by Private Party? Or will they instead target the World Trios Championships, which are held by the Death Rider trio of Claudio Castagnoli, PAC, and Wheeler Yutah? While only time will tell, it's safe to assume that this trio is going to go on one heck of a run in 2025, not too dissimilar to what fans expected from CM FTR before about a million things went wrong there. If Copeland can stay healthy, this group has the potential to become major players in AEW for much of the forthcoming calendar year.