When The Revival left WWE to shoot their shot on the indies, joining AEW under their long-term, tongue-in-cheek moniker FTR, they left a lot behind in order to earn their freedom.
Dash Wilder and Scott Dawson? Gone. Their old theme song, “Southern Proud?” Gone too. Even the team's finisher, the Shatter Machine, was renamed on multiple occasions, first to the Goodnight Express and then to the Big Rig in honor of the late, great, Brodie Lee… at least for a time. That's right, at Revolution 2023, FTR officially returned to AEW to challenge The Gunns to what would eventually become an “If We Lose, We Leave AEW” match, and they brought back the Shatter Machine, too, in order to fully signify a full-circle moment for the “Top Guys.”
Why, you may ask, did Harwood and Wheeler decide to bring back the finisher's original name? Well, because they heard Michael Cole call the move by its original name during a match featuring Edge and Beth Phoenix, and that helped to inspire the veteran grappler to re-use the nickname too, as he detailed in an interview with Fightful.
“How it came about was, obviously, Edge and Beth, they hit the move on WWE TV,” Harwood said via Fightful. “Hearing Michael Cole say Shatter Machine – you can ask my wife, she took a video – it made me so emotional, dude, because we came up with the move, we came up with the name, and now ten years after we’ve come up with all that stuff, they’re still using that name, that move in a company we’re not even associated with at the time. It struck a chord with me and I was like, ‘That’s what it’s called. It’s the Shatter Machine and that’s what we’re going to use.’ So signing over the rights, I don’t know if I can legally talk about all that stuff about what names were used and what wasn’t. I’ll just say that we got permission to use that name.”
Alright, does it really matter if FTR call their finisher the Shatter Machine, the Big Rig, or even the Goodnight Express? No, not really; the move is a dominant maneuver regardless of what announcers call it, but it is cool to hear why the moniker returned, especially since the “Rated-R Superstar” of WWE helped to usher it in.
FTR appreciate the support they've received from fans over the past few months.
Elsewhere in his interview with Fightful, Harwood discussed the sheer volume of support the “Top Guys” have received over the past few months and how it has energized their return to the ring at Revolution 2023.
“That’s cool. It’s very cool, obviously,” Harwood said via Fightful. “That’s the boring answer, to say it’s cool. But above that, man, it’s to see how much they care about me period. Not how much they like my matches. That’s cool, too. I love that, and I enjoy that. But, for example, we were at the Icons of Wrestling signing in Philly on Saturday, and we were supposed to go from 11:00 until 2:00, and I’m not saying this egotistically, I’m saying this as someone whose mind is blown. It was a surreal moment. I couldn’t believe it. Our line was out the building, out the door, wrapped around the building, dude. It was insane.
“Then the amount of people that came up to me and hugged me—men and women and children. There were a ton of children. The little kids, especially the little girls, [fight] like an eight-year-old girl did something to them. Some of the men, they come up to me, and they cry, man, and they hug me. They say, ‘Your speaking out about anxiety has helped me.’ Then the women, as well, coming up and hugging, saying how much we’ve touched their lives, how much they care about us, how much they love us. Then Revolution, coming back and hearing that ovation. Those are the things, dude, that I care about. I love winning these awards, and it makes me very proud. I know I’ve done something right for the thing I love, professional wrestling.”
With FTR's current run in AEW set to reach an inflection point at Double or Nothing 2023, as they will either defeat The Gunns to regain their championships or have to leave the promotion forever and presumably return to WWE either right away or after one final run on the indies. Either way, it's clear fans will follow FTR wherever they go, even if their moniker or what they call their finisher might change.
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