Speaking on a recent episode of his FTR podcast, Dax Harwood revealed when contract talks first began between he and Cash Wheeler and Tony Khan. He also had strong words about Mark Carrano, WWE’s former Senior Director of Talent Relations.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
Carrano not being a man of his word: “Mark Carrano had called us and said ‘look, we got some bad news for you guys. You know how we added two months onto Cash’s contract because of his broken jaw? Well, Dave, I’m sorry, we’re gonna have to add on four months to your contract for your torn bicep.’ I said Mark, you just told us a few weeks prior that you were not going to add on the time, that you would honor that. You gave us your word. He said ‘I’m sorry, that’s Vince’s call, not my call.’ Who am I supposed to trust now? You promised me that we were gonna be done here in July. So now you know why nobody trusts Mark Carrano.”
The ultimatum FTR were given before their WWE release: “So he called us two days before they released the announcement. He gave us an ultimatum, we’ll talk about it on a later episode. The ultimatum was obviously lopsided, all for them, nothing for us. We lost a s***-ton of money to a lopsided agreement for [WWE], but as long as we could get out of our contracts, that’s what we wanted.”
Getting in contact with people at AEW: “The day that Mark Carrano called us, so two days before the announcement was made online, he called us and said, ‘You don’t have to give us an answer right now, talk about it, give me a call back.’ I called Cash. We said, should we talk to Cody, or the Bucks, or Tony? He said yeah, let’s do that.
“So we sent the Bucks a text and said, ‘Hey, there’s a possibility that we may be leaving WWE, would you guys ever be interested in having us?’ And he said, ‘Well, I would love to have you.’ That’s all we needed to know. So we called Mark Carrano: ‘Yes, we agree to your terms. Please give us our release, and thank you.’ So he gave us our release.”
Speaking with Tony Khan: “The following day, whenever the contracts were cut and we got the paperwork from Mark Carrano that said we were officially released, is when we started talking contracts with Tony Khan. We had no 90-day no-compete clause. That was our ask. If we give all this, and you take all this money from us, at least just let us not have the ninety days. Let us just go out and do what we need to do immediately.”
FTR debuted in All Elite Wrestling in May 2020.
