Entertainment
AEW’s Cash Wheeler reveals how wrestling saved his life as FTR open up on emotional meaning behind Blood and Guts
AEW duo FTR have opened up on how much they owe to wrestling – and the importance of this week’s Blood and Guts show.
The former All Elite Wrestling tag team champions – who will appear in the brutal match on Wednesday’s episode of Dynamite alongside their Pinnacle teammates against the Inner Circle – candidly revealed how deep their passion runs for the industry and the artform.
Speaking exclusively to Metro.co.uk, Cash Wheeler said: ‘I feel like we owe wrestling so much. We had nothing growing up. I can tell you now that if it wasn’t for wrestling – I come from a family of addicts and I would have went that path.
‘It was the easiest path and the one that I knew other than wrestling. If I didn’t have something to hold onto and grasp at to lead me in a different direction I would be… not good.
‘I know that for a fact, because one of my best friends is not here with us anymore because of something like that. I was going in that same direction.
‘Without wrestling, who knows? I wanna leave it better than I found it because I owe it everything.’
His tag team partner Dax Harwood agreed with the sentiment, and insisted while the pair are determined to build their own legacy, they don’t want to be stealing the spotlight from younger talent once they’ve outstayed their welcome.
‘We left [WWE] together because of our legacy and we started in AEW because of our legacy, and that’s a very important thing to us,’ he said.
‘But our job is also to make sure that when we’re done and we hang it up, everybody that we worked with is better than we were before.
‘This might get me a little heat, but Cash can tell ya I don’t give a damn about heat.
‘We’re not gonna be the guys at 45, 50 years old and 50 plus who think that we need to go out there and still have 30-minute matches and beat everybody. That’s not us. We want to give back.’
As students of the game, FTR – formerly known as The Revival before betting on themselves by leaving WWE to join AEW – are thrilled to be taking part in the latter’s version of WarGames this week.
Dax and Cash – who are accompanied by Tully Blanchard – will fight alongside Wardlow, Shawn Spears and MJF against Chris Jericho, Sammy Guevara, Jake Hager, Santana and Ortiz.
‘You hear Santana and Ortiz talk about their upbringing, but their upbringing was a Saturday morning sitcom compared to ours,’ Dax firmly explained. ‘All we had growing up – we had our family and stuff, but all we had to latch onto was professional wrestling.
‘As corny as it sounds, wrestling was always there for us.’
FTR promise to bring unmatched intensity on Wednesday, and admitted the match – and the event itself – is ‘probably the biggest’ in Dynamite history.
‘From when we first got signed to where we are now, I would say we’ve over achieved,’ Cash candidly suggested. ‘Guys like us probably shouldn’t be doing this.
‘We shouldn’t be where we are right now, but somehow, someway we’re here and we’re showing that we belong. We’re showing that we’re not out of place in the main event.’
Dax undoubtedly agrees, and he challenged everyone else in the brutal match to step up to the plate and deliver the way they intend to.
‘Twitter and social media remind us every single day that we’re not the tallest, we’re not the biggest, we’re not the fastest, we’ve got the worse bodies, we talk in a southern accent. We get reminded of that every day,’ he added.
‘There’s nobody in wrestling that can match our intensity, our gas tank, what we bring to the table as far as realism goes… I think Blood and Guts is gonna be our coming out party as far as that goes.
‘If we can get the other eight guys to match our intensity, it will be one of the greatest and most brutal matches in the history of professional wrestling.’
*AEW Dynamite: Blood and Guts airs in the UK on Wednesday (May 5) at 1am on Fite TV and on Friday at 11pm on ITV4.
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