Saptarshi Sinha on January 19, 2023
Paul Heyman, the mastermind behind ECW, shares a highly personal relationship with Vince McMahon. Over the years, Heyman has become one of Vince’s confidantes, handling business both on-screen and off-camera. Despite burying McMahon on his original pipe bomb promo back in the day, Heyman has the utmost respect for the WWE Executive Chairman of the Board.
On the latest “FTR with Dax Harwood” podcast, Dax Harwood shared a story about Paul Heyman from the period when Heyman was the Director of Monday Night RAW. Needless to say, this was an entertaining tale.
“So this is around November 11 or something.It was close to that. We were on this long tour. We had been gone for a very long time. I remember between October and November, we were home, me and Cash, were home three days because the tour had been broken up. We had gone to China and Saudi and then we did Australia. We did the UK and things like that, Ireland. The tour had been broken up into two different tours. Everyone had gotten to do half of a tour. So like, for example, half of the roster did the first half, and they brought in a whole new roster for the second half, except for a couple of guys like Roman, who had just signed one of the new contracts making a ton of money. I think Seth as well, maybe. But other than that me and Dan were the only ones who were on the whole tour.”
Dax Harwood said while he doesn’t hold anything against Paul Heyman, he couldn’t help but refer to him as a “carny” for the time he called Vince McMahon after he and Cash Wheeler had disclosed their decision to miss RAW in order to be with their family.
“After the tour was finally over, I think we were set to go to NXT as well, which was on a Wednesday. They wanted us to go to RAW. We had been drafted to SmackDown. They wanted us to go to RAW. We were called by travel, the WWE travel services, to tell us that we were needed for RAW and we lost it. We said. ‘Absolutely not.’ We had been on the road at the time for 17 straight days. Like I said, three days home for a month and a half or whatever it was. I think we said, ‘What are we doing?’ They said, ‘Well, right now the creative is you guys are gonna come in and attack Randy’, which is crazy because travel is telling us this. ‘You’re going to attack Randy, and then NXT is going to come in to jump you guys and beat you down.’ We said, ‘No, absolutely not. We’re not coming in to do that.’ They said, ‘Well, they’ve got you scheduled. They need you.’ I said, ‘We’re not doing that. We’re not going to do that.’ ‘Have Heyman, who was booking at the time, have him call us and tell us that.’”
On April 10th, 2020, Dax Harwood and Cash Wilder were granted their releases from WWE. The duo was frustrated with Vince McMahon’s comical booking of the tag team division. Harwood and Wheeler were convinced that WWE’s tag team championships were meaningless.
“We were in a hotel room and Paul Heyman called us. He said, ‘Hey, guys, I hear there’s some problems with you guys not wanting to come to RAW.’ We said, ‘Absolutely. This is our deal. We haven’t been home for this long. We’re SmackDown guys. We just got to go to NXT this day. Why do we need to be there?’ ‘Well, we need to do this. You’re a vital part of this angle’ We said, ‘Well, what is it? ‘Well, we’re gonna have you finally break up the deal with Randy. You’re gonna beat him up.’
I said, ‘What’s gonna happen after that’, which we didn’t want to do that anyway. ‘NXT is going to invade the ring, and you guys are gonna get the sh*t kicked out of you by NXT, which is going to set up for some stuff later.’ I said, ‘No, we’re not doing that. I’m sorry.’ I said, ‘Paul, we were told by travel that we had creative for RAW. We’re expecting to go home. I’m going to see my wife and my daughter, and we’re told by travel.’ He said, ‘Hang on one second.’ He had the phone right to his mouth. Paul thinks he’s this incredible worker, like, as far as, I mean, he’s a great carny. Let’s just put it like that.
He says, ‘Hey Vince, yeah, It’s The Revival. Yep. Yeah, they were told by travel. Can you believe that Vince?’ ‘Yeah, Vince can’t believe that either. He can’t believe you guys were told by travel what your creative was.’ He said, ‘Vince, what do you think?’ It was such a carny thing to do. We said, ‘Paul, we’re absolutely not going to be there. We can’t do that. I’m going to go home to see my family.’ He said, ‘Hang on one second.’ ‘Vince. They said they can’t. They want to go see their family. Yeah, I think they should, too. Yeah, I think it’s a great idea.’ ‘Alright guys, so I’m going to talk to Vince a little bit more, but we think we’ve got you off that RAW.’ Okay. It was like, ‘Man, we know you’re not talking to Vince. We know he’s not there.’”
“So that was just some of the stuff we had to deal with at the time. I don’t fault Paul for that. You know what I mean? I don’t fault him for that. I don’t hold any hard feelings to Paul for that because I think, I feel he was a fan of ours, but I think he was also doing what his job entailed him to do, but also it’s like, you could just be straight up with us. You can be honest with us.”
Dax Harwood didn’t shy away from revealing his low-dollar contract with WWE. The 6-figure salary he was earning in WWE prior to his release was not a fair remuneration for his strenuous schedule.
On the May 27th, 2020, episode of Dynamite, FTR made their AEW, rescuing The Young Bucks from The Butcher and The Blade. Last year, FTR cemented their legacy as Triple Tag Team Champions by holding the AAA, ROH, and IWGP World Tag Tem Championships simultaneously.
What’s your take on the story? Sound off in the comments!
January 19, 2023 10:50 pm
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