Dax Harwood Recalls How The Pinnacle Was Formed In AEW
Dax Harwood has recalled the formation of the AEW group known as The Pinnacle, which had a short run in the company before fizzling out.
The Pinnacle was an AEW stable consisting of Maxwell Jacob Friedman (MJF), the FTR tag team (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler), Wardlow and Shawn Spears as the five wrestlers in the group along with Tully Blanchard as the manager.
In early 2021, The Pinnacle became a top heel stable in AEW that was feuding with The Inner Circle group led by Chris Jericho. They would go on to have a Blood & Guts match on Dynamite won by The Pinnacle. There was a rematch at Double or Nothing 2021 that saw The Inner Circle beat The Pinnacle in a Stadium Stampede match.
For the rest of 2021 and into 2022, The Pinnacle wasn’t consistently used as a group. Wardlow ended up turning against MJF to become a babyface while FTR also became a babyface team in 2022 as well. There really was no formal ending for the group.
While speaking on his FTR podcast, Dax Harwood spoke about how the group was formed while saying that MJF thought it would be a good idea if they all worked together.
“I think Max was I think at the time, Max was looking forward to working with me and Dan [Cash Wheeler’s real name], and obviously we were looking forward to working with Max too, we’d had like a Twitter exchange. Before that, before he even came to AEW about, you know, eventually, one day we’ll get more together or something. But we were you know, I think, you know, he saw the potential that he and you know, all of us had to work together.”
As he continued, Dax Harwood explained Tony Khan’s vision for the group while adding that Chris Jericho wanted a heel stable to go against the Inner Circle.
“But the idea was brought to me by Tony. He wanted a Dangerous Alliance/Four Horsemen-type group. And Jericho. Jericho was the, you know, one of the guys that came up and said that he wanted this group to be formed, so we could work with Inner Circle.”
“So I think the, you know, Max told me he wanted to work with me and Cash. And he felt at the time, we were the only heels working as heels. Tony was on board with the idea that year, I think Jericho was the actual one that told me about the group and wanting to work with The Inner Circle.”
Throughout the podcast, Dax Harwood explained his frustrations with The Pinnacle group while joking at the end that if he could do it again, “I wouldn’t have joined it.”