Dax Harwood Details His Issues With Road Dogg

AEW’s Dax Harwood has discussed his problems with Road Dogg and says he doesn’t know how much respect he has for the WWE Hall of Famer as a person.

Dax Harwood is one-half of the current IWGP and AAA Tag Team Champions along with Cash Wheeler. The duo were previously part of WWE where they captured the NXT, Raw, and SmackDown Tag Team Championships while known collectively as The Revival.

Speaking on the Gentleman Villain podcast – a special episode to introduce Harwood’s own forthcoming podcast ‘FTR with Dax Harwood’ the AEW star was asked for his thoughts on WWE Senior Vice President, Road Dogg. From the start, Harwood says, he thinks the former New Age Outlaw had issues with him:

“I think from the day Road Dogg met me he didn’t like me. We had a match you might have heard of against American Alpha at NXT Dallas. It’s one of my favourites of all time. I had in my mind what that match was, I had the story I wanted to tell, I knew the false finishes I wanted, I knew how I wanted the front half to go, I knew exactly what was gonna work.”

“He offered an idea on the night before Dallas and we were talking with [Jason] Jordan and [Chad] Gable and I was explaining to them the story I wanted to tell. And [Road Dogg] offered an idea and I didn’t shoot it down, I just didn’t think it fit in the story I wanted to tell. He went to an unnamed source who is a very big part of the WWE office and he proceeded to bury me and tell me that I thought I knew everything – not tell me, tell that person that I thought I knew everything and that I would never try to learn anything.”

Tensions rose even further when Dax Harwood took to social media to call a SmackDown match “stupid” – a match that Road Dogg himself had booked. According to Harwood, this led to calls from the talent relations department after Road Dogg publicly threatened to hold down Harwood’s WWE career:

“So I had my own reservations about him and then come later that year I want to say it was right around December there was some sort of gimmick gauntlet tag team match on SmackDown and for some reason, the fans thought The Revival were gonna make their debut there. The fans were Tweeting and freaking out over it and the match was over. We were heels so I went on Twitter and said “if you fans thought that we were gonna debut on the main roster in a stupid gimmick gauntlet match you’ve lost your mind” or something like that.”

“At the time Road Dogg was booking and he took offence to that because I wrote stupid gimmick and he proceeded to write on Twitter that if I kept it up, he would make sure I would never make it to the main roster. If I never make it to the main roster that cuts into my money which cuts into the money that I make for my family, which I can provide for my daughter to go through college, or I can make sure my wife has food on the table and that’s what bothered me.”

“Then right after he put that Tweet out I got a text from Mark Carrano [former Senior Director of Talent Relations] which led to a call from both those guys to make sure they were covering their tracks because Road Dogg basically said he was gonna make sure I would never have any advancement in the company. Legally they’re not allowed to do that because they’re in powerful positions in the office and for him to say I’m gonna make sure that you’re not gonna move on and you can’t advance your money, legally they shouldn’t be able to do that. So they were trying to cover their tracks.”

Dax Harwood also noted his experience on the 25th-anniversary show of Raw where he and Cash Wheeler were the foil for Finn Balor, Luke Gallows, Karl Anderson, as well as DX and Razor Ramon:

“Then fast forward to Raw 25 I had to go in there and make sure that Shawn [Michaels] and all of his friends looked a million bucks. We got to the back and Road Dogg passed right by me, didn’t say thank you after we bumped around for him, the only person who said thank you was Sean Waltman. So as a wrestler I respect everything he’s done in the business and I respect the path he’s paved for us, as a person I don’t know how much respect I have for him.”

If you use any quotes from this article please credit original source and then h/t with a link back to TJRWrestling for the transcription.