Dax Harwood has watched plenty of recognizable wrestlers hit the independent scene after making their names on WWE or AEW television. According to him, some of them show up, take the easiest possible night and leave with their envelope.
He isn’t naming names. He definitely sounds like he has a few in mind. Speaking to Cromulent Wrestling, Harwood brought up FTR’s independent bookings over the last several years and admitted he’s noticed a pattern with certain established television wrestlers.
“Even when we’ve done a few of these indie shows, right? These independent wrestling shows over the last, I don’t know, maybe four years that we’ve done them, I see a lot of guys—and, you know, even looking now, I see a lot of guys who have a little bit of a—who have had a name on TV wrestling, whether it was AEW or WWE. I see them come in and they take the easy way out, and they just do the—they do as little as possible.”
Harwood doesn’t think being the biggest name on the poster gives anybody permission to coast. Quite the opposite. FTR has worked its share of independent dates while already being internationally known, and Dax challenged anyone to find an example where he and Cash Wheeler treated one of those bookings like an easy payday.
“And I would beg you to go and look at any of the independent wrestling matches Cash and I have had over these last four years, and I can guarantee you, you won’t find one we’ve taken a night off.”
There’s a reason Dax takes it so seriously. When an independent promoter books somebody fans recognize from WWE or AEW, they’re usually paying considerably more than they would for another name on the card. That wrestler becomes part of the reason people buy tickets in the first place.
If the big attraction finally gets into the ring and barely bothers delivering, Harwood says the wrestler isn’t the only person affected.
“People paying the money to see it, but also, you know, the promoter has to pay a lot of money and put a lot of time into it. So if they book these guys who have this name, the fans expect something from them, and that name doesn’t deliver, that does nothing but hurt the promoter and hurt the promotion and the wrestlers that are in it. They don’t see far past their envelope at the end of the night, you know.”
Dax didn’t expose anybody by name, so the guessing game can begin. He just made his standard pretty clear: if your WWE or AEW résumé is the reason an indie promoter is paying to put your name on the poster, showing up isn’t enough. You still have to earn the envelope.
What do you make of Dax Harwood calling out established wrestlers for coasting on independent shows? Let us know in the comments below.
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