FTR Explain Why They Feel The Younger Generation ‘Aren’t As Hungry’

FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler) have found success everywhere they have gone in wrestling, winning tag team gold in AEW, WWE, NJPW, ROH, and AAA. 

The duo have worked with some of the best tag teams in history, facing off against the likes of The Usos (Jimmy Uso & Jey Uso), The Young Bucks (Matthew Jackson & Nicholas Jackson), The Briscoes (Mark Briscoe & Jay Briscoe), and more. 

Speaking to Renee Paquette on Close Up, FTR was asked who they saw in the AEW tag team division that stands out. 

Cash: The Gunns. Unfortunately. 

Dax: The Gunns. The Outrunners have something different. Here is the thing, the whole tag division, they all offer something with their talent. I had a Q&A thing on my Instagram, and I said it then and some of the tag teams came to me and they said they were going to take it to heart. What I said was, I feel there aren’t many, not just tag teams, the younger generation that we have here aren’t as hungry to succeed or aren’t as hungry to be the top guys. 

Cash: They don’t want to step on toes. They want everybody to be friends. We’re not saying you have to backstab and politic. Us with (Chad) Gable and (Jason) Jordan, we were so competitive with each other, but we were great friends. It brought out the best in us. Us with Mark and Jay (Briscoe). Great friends, but it brought out the best in us. I don’t see that competitive friendship with a lot of people. 

Dax: I’m not trying to be negative. I’m just hoping they’ll hear this and go, ‘Oh fuck. That’s me.’ I think they would rather come to work and have people like them and have everybody like them rather than come to work and have a couple of friends and more associates, and people that dislike them, but they’re moving up. I think they’re afraid of someone disliking them. I don’t know if that’s the culture now. 

Cash: I think you’re much more aware and sensitive to the fact that people like you or not now because you can see it and read it all over the place. It’s not just the younger people, but the younger generation, that has known nothing else but that, it shapes how they think when they’re making these moves and steps. 

Dax: Not that I think this is a bad thing, but the two top wrestling companies in the world offer guaranteed contracts. You get paid so much money. Unless you have so much pride, it’s hard even have an incentive to want to work. I don’t think what a lot of the young people understand is, in their mind, ‘If we win or lose this match or if we work 100 matches, we’re going to get paid the same.’ Eventually, the contract is going to come up. For us, in 2022, we have the trilogy with the Briscoes, we won three tag team championship belts. In 2023, we had two out of three falls 55-minute match and we had all these great things starting Collision. All these things are upping our equity. Now, when it’s our time and our contract comes up, we can say, ‘Well, this is what we had when we were doing this. Now we’ve done all this, so I think we can get a little more. 

Cash: The company is going to invest in you, but if you don’t work to carry your part of the bargain, and the return on investment isn’t there, they’re not going to re-invest in you. 

FTR will team with The Outrunners and HOOK on Saturday’s AEW Collision. 

Elsewhere during the interview, Cash opened up regarding his arrest in May 2023. You can find his full comments by clicking here. 

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