Before they were FTR, we saw the Revival work with numerous big names in WWE, but even more pitched to be involved with them.
As Fightful reported last year, Randy Orton specifically pitched to keep the "FTRKO" team together, but to no avail. When speaking to us, Cash Wheeler and Dash Wilder said that wasn't necessarily the point where they realized that powerful pitches didn't necessarily mean fruitful angles.
Cash Wheeler began, "At that point maybe not. Bray [Wyatt] had done it. Roman [Reigns] had done it."
"Usos, New Day," Harwood added.
"Shane had done it," Wheeler stated.
"Yeah, Shane McMahon,s the owner’s son," Harwood laughed.
Sometimes, the benefit of people wanting to work with you can also be a detriment, as it gets in the way of some other plans, as FTR found out.
Cash Wheeler said, "That’s kinda why we stop-started stuff with the Usos, it started to get heated up and then put on the back burner so we could do the stuff with Shane. It was going well, it was a hot storyline at the time and Shane had requested it. But, then all of a sudden they told us, “We’re done with that, you’re going back to Usos.” We’d been away from them for about a month and it kinda cooled off. So, then we had to try to pick back up cold. It is what it is. It’s not just for us. Everybody there across the board. Things get picked up and dropped without explanation. There can’t be everything changes on a whim so much there. Because I don’t envy the job of the creative team. They have so many moving parts they have to work with all the time. It’s just gonna happen. It’s not just us. It’s everybody across the board."
That gave way to the aforementioned story with Randy Orton and New Day. Many expected Orton and the then-named Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder to become a fixture on WWE TV. Not only were Orton's requests ignored, they put the former-Revival on Raw. Dax remembered seeing that situation as the tipping point in the deteriorating relationship between WWE and the team.
Harwood said, "By that point, I had told him that if they messed up this opportunity they had with us and Randy—and I said this one time before, that was with the Usos, but we were still kind of in the fold with them—but I told them, if they messed up this thing with us and Randy, there’s no reason for us to re-sign these contracts. None at all. But, yeah. We watched Roman Reigns go to Vince and say, “I want to work with these guys. I want them to beat me. We watched Bray Wyatt do that. Matt Hardy. The Usos. New Day. Then of course we watched Randy do it on a weekly basis. The reason it lasted for six or eight weeks is because of Randy," said Dax, as Cash followed up saying Orton pushed for the trio for so long."
Having powerful people go to bat for Dax and Cash, only to be shut down was disheartening, but they didn't want to stop pitching ideas. Unfortunately, that's what we hear happening so often, but for FTR, they wanted to keep giving it a go.
Harwood stated, "The things we were doing with him and New Day could have been such a great money making venture, but that wasn’t in the plans. That’s not what Vince wanted. You said you understand, or you can see why, guys don’t want to pitch. I get what you’re saying. But, man, why stop? I stayed up every single week. We would get two days home, and I’m infatuated with my wife and my daughter, but I would take hours away from them to sit in front of the computer that I’m sitting in front of right now to type up pitches and angles and storylines for me and Cash to present to the creative team, to present to Vince, and it never got used. But, I never stopped because I wanted us to be the best and I wanted them to know we’re working at least as hard as anybody else to be able to be on that television."
"It wasn’t for a lack of trying," Wheeler closed.
You can see our full, exclusive interview at the top of the page, and check out FTR every week on AEW Dynamite on TNT, Wednesday nights at 8 PM EST.
