FTR (Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood) don't care about rankings because they're confident that they're the best.
FTR currently hold tag team titles in AAA, ROH, and NJPW. They are also former champions in AEW and across all three brands of WWE. Naturally, they are often viewed as an all-time great duo, but these talks are subjective.
Speaking on the MackMania, Wheeler and Harwood were asked whether they put a lot of talk into rankings and discussions about who's the best of all time. Wheeler made it clear that he's confident that FTR is the best, so any rankings or lists that say otherwise don't mean much to him. Instead, he's focused on making wrestling believable. While he appreciates the fans' support, he noted that nothing will shake his view regarding FTR's greatness.
Wheeler: "I mean, no one’s gonna convince me otherwise that we’re not the best tag team on the planet. So anything that doesn’t have us at the top of the list, I’m gonna discredit. Really, I think it’s nice to get accolades, it’s nice to hear people enjoy what you do and they appreciate what you do. But at the end of the day, I don’t ever go into my match thinking about how I’m gonna get that approval. I don’t think about how it’s gonna be received by critics. I think about what I care about and what makes me feel something, and what I perceive to be making realism in wrestling as believable as possible. That’s kind of what I follow. So yeah, it’s cool, especially now getting into discussions about where we rank on the all-time list and stuff like that. It’s something to be proud of, but at the end of the day, you’re never gonna convince me we’re not the absolute best."
Harwood chimed in, noting that if they were focused on the rankings, they'd be the AEW World Tag Team Champions by now because they've been the top-ranked team since April. Overall, he made it clear that positive feedback from his peers and people he looks up to matters to him.
Harwood: "I mean, if we were worried about rankings, we’d be tag team champions right now. We’ve been number one in AEW since [April]. For the love of god, Tony, give us a shot. The thing is with that and the rankings and stuff and people saying we’re the greatest of all time or the greatest right now or we’re the fucking worst of all time, all that is subjective, and that’s cool. But the win for me is whenever Bret Hart texts me, or Randy Orton texts me, or Edge, or Arn Anderson, or any of these guys that I look up to text me and say, ‘That was a fucking classic.’"
Wheeler then brought up a compliment he got from Arn Anderson as an example.
Wheeler: "Today at 1 p.m., from Arn Anderson, in a green text, of course. 'Reviewed y’all’s match the Briscoes for Ad Free Shows. My god, man. What a fight. I love you guys.’ Nobody can tell me nothing. Look at these long-ass arm hairs standing up."
Likewise, Harwood recalled how Randy Orton commended him and Claudio Castagnoli after their recent match on AEW Rampage.
Harwood: "It might get him in trouble, but whatever. After my match with Claudio, Randy Orton texts me and Claudio and could not stop talking about how great the match was, and selling and what’s missing in wrestling. He said that match is what’s missing. Yeah man, I love getting accolades and I love fans caring about us and loving us and ranking us high. But when my peers and the people I look up to are the ones who give us the accolades, that’s pretty cool."
Harwood went on to describe how he, like Wheeler, doesn't set out to score a five-star match. Instead, he focuses on making people feel something during their matches.
Harwood: "At the end of the day, man, I’ve never, same with Cash, have never, ever constructed a match saying, ‘Oh, this has gotta be a five-star match. We’ve gotta make this a five-star match. I don’t give one single solitary shit about any one man or woman’s opinion. I care about the masse, and if I can make the people feel a certain way, man, that’s the shit that we live for."
Harwood recently refused to laugh at a meme about FTR's lack of a title shot in AEW. More information is available here.
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