Dax Harwood Calls Out Wrestling Journalist For “Face To Face” Meeting

Few could have predicted just how many headlines Dax Harwood would have created when he began his FTR podcast, and now the AEW star has offered the Wrestling Observer’s Bryan Alvarez the chance to explain the wrestling business to him.

On the surface, the apparent disagreement between Alvarez and Harwood stems from whether or not you believe Harwood’s assertion that nothing has changed in regard to FTR’s contract status and that presumably their deals end in April or whether you believe Alvarez’s take on the situation – he thinks Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler have already signed new, longer-term contracts with the promotion.

However, the issues here are dripping with subtext. Dax Harwood is publicly not a fan of the Wrestling Observer, Alvarez, or Dave Meltzer, and believes them all to be in league with The Young Bucks. Harwood, of course, is good friends with CM Punk, and the problems involving Punk, other stars of AEW, and Meltzer have all blown up again in recent days long after anyone got their arm bitten following All Out in 2022.

Bryan Alvarez recently commented on Wrestling Observer Live about the current AEW storyline which saw FTR return to the company after a short hiatus and offer to put their careers in the company on the line to get an AEW World Tag Team Championship match with The Gunns. According to Alvarez, he believes FTR is staying put and doesn’t want any more storylines in AEW where people threaten to quit:

“I have not bought this whole deal that they’ve been telling for months now. I haven’t bought it, not one bit have I bought it. This ‘our deals are up.’ I don’t buy it for a second. I think that they have either been re-signed, or their deals were never coming up, they still have time left on the deals. And this whole thing has just been a storyline to set up this deal right here [Gunns vs FTR]…

Even if their deal IS up in April, I am so sick of people talking about how they might want to go somewhere else. How is this helping AEW? It’s now a storyline, all these guys going on Twitter, and crying about how they want to leave! This is not what this company needs! It needs FTR to have great fucking tag team matches, go in there, win the tag team titles, we don’t need this aspect of the storyline. That they may quit. I don’t know. Golly. This business has passed me by.”

Needless to say, Dax Harwood was not impressed and on his FTR podcast, he addressed Alvarez’s comments in his trademark forthright way:

“Not one single time, dude. Not one time have we mentioned anything with our contracts on TV. The only time I’ve mentioned it is on my Twitter, where I talk about my personal life, and on this podcast. That’s okay if he doesn’t buy it. That’s totally okay if he doesn’t buy it.

“What I will say are the tons of other people who buy it. And the tons of other people that were in the arena that night when I put our careers on the line, and like I said, they audibly gasped. At the fact that I put that on the line, and they were like ‘oh my god, we don’t know what’s gonna happen.’ Or the thousands of people that tweet at me, and they don’t know what we’re gonna do.

“I’ve been very transparent with what I’m gonna do, very transparent that I’m not playing one company against another. But y’know, he’s telling me what I should and shouldn’t do, ‘go and have great matches. Everybody wants to see FTR have great matches. Just do that.’ No, dude! That is the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.

“Great matches are icing on the cake. The great matches are icing on the cake. I want them to care about me. I want them to care about Cash. And they do, man. They f*cking love us! They love us, dude! A love that outside of my wife and daughter I never thought I could feel.”

Harwood continued, going as far as to offer Bryan Alvarez the chance to come and explain the wrestling business to him face-to-face at his upcoming live show:

“Now what I say to Alvarez is. I would imagine you’re gonna be at a scrum, or you’re going to be at an AEW pay-per-view. Dude, I’m not your friend. But I want you, the you behind this mic, I want you to keep the exact same energy. I want you to come to my face and explain, explain professional wrestling to me. Please. Explain it to me and tell me why the way I’ve done it, on a mainstream level for ten years, is ‘wrong.’

“And tell me how this five-foot-ten, shitty-ass body, sh*tty-ass mustache, bald-ass, dumbass accent, has made it to the heights I’ve made it. Please tell me, dude. Cause I would love to hear your answer, face-to-face. GodDANG, you got me fired up! Invite [Alvarez] to the live show! Tell him to come explain it to me at the live show! I’d love that. I’ll give him his own mic, his own platform, and we can talk about it face-to-face.”

In the meantime, FTR will challenge The Gunns for the AEW World Tag Team Championship with their careers in the company hanging in the balance (possibly) on the 5th of April edition of Dynamite live in New York.

h/t 411 Mania