In 2020, there wasn't a more hotly anticipated match in AEW than the Young Bucks versus FTR. Finally, after years of anticipation, the two best tag teams in the world, at least according to general consensus, would finally take the ring to see who were the real top guys, and the fans both at home and in attendance at Full Gear 2020 would get to see if their specific styles of in-ring work would mesh together like peanut butter and chocolate or oil and water.
Though the match was widely viewed as a resounding success, with Dave Meltzer giving the match 5.25 stars, Dax Harwood was far less of a fan of the match, as he detailed on the latest edition of FTR the podcast.
“When I looked back on it, wrong or right, I'm not saying I'm right. I'm saying this is how anxiety works, this is how insecurity works, and a lot of these things I was fighting with. I'm not a perfect human being, I'm trying my best to be better,” Harwood said via Fightful. “When I looked back on it and when I realized things weren't going to go the way we had expected them to go and the way, maybe, we were told. I look back on the angle and I started thinking, I don't know if this was purposeful, it probably wasn't, but I was like, ‘Man, the Young Bucks and FTR was a backdrop, leading up, to Hangman Page and Young Bucks.' After the match, where hopefully we could have gotten a little bit of focus when we were crawling up the stage, the commentators could have said, ‘they left their comfort zone and they tried to play the Young Bucks game and it didn't work, now the Young Bucks have finally proven they are the best tag team in the world. What will FTR feel? How will they think?' We got Omega and Page coming out and we were an afterthought. Thinking about it in 2023, if that's what the company wanted, that's okay. Thinking about in 2020 and 2021, I was bitter and upset about it because I felt that we were brought in, given a short title reign, and we were going to be forgotten about.”
While at the time, the match between the Bucks and FTR was one of the most hotly anticipated bouts in AEW history, as Being the Elite had been building up hype for the match with the “FTR Movement” before the match was even close to a possibility, Harwood didn't feel that momentum. No, in actuality, Harwood felt the feud's build-up and eventual build-down actually wholly underwhelming.
“It wasn't built up to that, and it should have been. The story of the match told that, but the build-up didn't. I can confidently say that the four guys in the match didn't feel the build-up was done well either. With 2023 eyes, I look back and say, ‘If that's what the company wanted to, that's their prerogative,' but me, with a completely different mindset and my brain freaking out on me, I was taking everything as the world was against me. I was kind of upset. Now, I look back, and say, ‘It was a Saturday.'”
Just a Saturday? That's a little harsh, right? Well, based on Harwood's further comments, it's clear he was not in a good place around the match.
Dax Harwood felt FTR were a backdrop in AEW back in 2020.
So why did Harwood have issues with his match versus the Bucks?
“I felt like we were a backdrop,” Harwood said. “I felt that everything we had been promised, when we came in, we were promised that the tag division was going to be built around these two teams, and I felt it wasn't being built around us. I felt we were lied to and at the time we were being lied to. I think my relationship with Tony got even more strained, I felt the relationship with the Bucks completely deteriorated. I take the blame for that. I take the blame for it because I shouldn't have taken wrestling so seriously. If Tony decided that he didn't think we were in that league or we should've been presented in a certain way, it's his company. Same thing with Vince (McMahon). I hold no ill will towards Vince or Tony (Khan). Tony is one of my closest buds now and I love him for what he's done for me and my family. I should've looked back and said, ‘If Tony doesn't look at us in this light, what can I do to prove him wrong?' Instead, I had the same thought, but I was going to be combative and fight for it, and I shouldn't have. It's his company. If there were, if there are ill feelings between us and the Young Bucks, it was because we took it personally and we shouldn't have taken it personally. I think they took how we felt personally, and they probably should have because we probably weren't being the best team players at that point. I can speak for me, I wasn't being the best team player because of all the sh*t I had going on in my brain.”
Wow, it's truly unfortunate that Harwood couldn't enjoy his match with the Young Bucks and allowed it to negatively affect his relationship with both the Jacksons and Khan. While Harwood has reportedly matched things up with Khan and the Bucks since, at the time, he didn't like how FTR was being booked at the time and felt that that affected his enjoyment of wrestling as a whole.
“We had a lot of meetings with Tony during this time period,” Harwood said. “From the time 2021 started to right after I had my anxiety attack and I started to get on the good side of that. We had a lot of talks with Tony. I remember telling him, ‘Tony, I want you to present us as 1A and 1B with the Young Bucks.' He said, ‘You guys are 1A and 1B.' I think he did think that. I think he thought that in the world of wrestling, the best tag teams in the world, we were 1A and 1B. I didn't feel that we were being presented that way, but I think he did feel that way. I think he felt we were the two greatest tag teams in the world and he thought that was good enough. It probably was good enough and should've been good enough, but to me, it wasn't.”
Fortunately, it appears Harwood is in a much better place now and is able to discuss these issues openly and really peel back the curtain on what he was going through when it externally looked like he was at the top of the world professionally. If Harwood's comments help just one person, his podcast will be a success.
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