AEW star Dax Harwood from FTR recently spoke to the News Reporter in Columbus to discuss all things pro-wrestling. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
How he bought his own wrestling ring because he always knew he wanted to be a wrestler:
I worked all summer one year and saved my money and actually bought an old wrestling ring and set it up in my dad’s backyard. I was very fortunate to have a dad that allowed me to partake in something I considered to be a step forward in my dream. I would have friends from high school come over and watch it. We’d all put matches on. I just knew for my life and what I wanted to do, wrestling was my ultimate goal.
Says Bret Hart always “spoke” to him because he was real:
There’s been a lot of wrestlers who were like superheroes and action heroes like Hulk Hogan, the Ultimate Warrior, Bill Goldberg and things like that…but Bret Hart resonated with me because he was real to me,” Harwood said. “He was a real human being. He wasn’t playing a character. For some reason, he struck an emotional chord with me; I wanted to be Bret Hart. He stood up for what he believed in; he stood up for what was right.
Proposing to his wife and getting called by WWE:
When I got back from Japan, I knew I wanted to ask my girlfriend at the time to marry me,” Harwood said. And that’s what he did. Around that same time, he considered ending his wrestling career because of his physical stature. I thought that I had done as much as I could. I thought [WWE] would never look at a guy like me who isn’t above six-feet tall, who doesn’t have everything going for him except for his ability in the ring and his work ethic. But as soon as I decided to quit wrestling, that’s when WWE called. My wife and I got married on Sept. 16, 2012, and we had that date planned for over a year, and on Sept. 17, we got up that morning, we took off and went to Tampa, Florida, and on Sept. 18, I started working for WWE.
On getting paired with Cash Wheeler:
He and I, we knew each other from North Carolina. We had worked together around the same areas on the independent circuit. We had a plan that when he got signed we would team together, but it wasn’t an immediate thing for our success. Two guys, who were 5’10”, and they have Southern accents, which are not looked upon too highly in WWE. We come in, and we have to work. We can’t come in and stand above everyone. We had to show them not only that we were the best tag team, but the two best wrestlers the company had. And after a while, they couldn’t deny us.
How AEW takes tag team wrestling seriously:
We had gone as far as we felt we could go in WWE. They don’t take tag team wrestling as seriously as (AEW) does in WWE. We knew if we wanted to build upon that legacy, we had to go to AEW.
Getting to work with Tully Blanchard:
Tully and Arn, along with Bret Hart, those are my heroes in wrestling. I never imagined growing up or being in the business working side by side with my heroes. I can say this from a confident place, I get emotional about it…There’s no way you can put in print what it means to me to be able to do that.