Have you noticed that FTR has been losing a lot?
2023 was quite the eventful year for the duo since they won the AEW World Tag Team titles for the second time in their careers. Dax and Cash had their usual match of the year candidate against The Young Bucks, but they also have notable bangers against Aussie Open (Kyle Fletcher & Mark Davis), Adam Cole & MJF, and Bullet Club Gold (Jay White & Juice Robinson) .
Then Things slowed down for the duo once they dropped the belts to Ricky Starks & Big Bill. FTR started fighting against new and rising teams like The Outrunners and La Faccion Ingobernable (Dralistico & Rush). 2024 wasn't the year about winning championships. It was the year that FTR wanted to give back to the division and put over the up-and-coming teams in AEW, according to the former AEW World Tag Team Champion Dax Harwood.
"I told [Cash] him in 2024, the beginning of this year, I said, ‘If we retired today, I’d be happy. I would be okay with what we’ve accomplished.’ So 2024, our goal was to try to help make wrestlers, to try to help make wrestlers, to try to help make younger stars. I don’t like getting into too much inside baseball, but if you look at our 2024, we lost more than we won. You could say that might’ve been by design because we wanted to help out as much as we could the company, but also help bring up these younger stars. So my idea in 2024 was to help bring up guys like RUSH, guys Iike Dralistico…Daniel Garcia, that was a big pet project of mine.
I wanted to make sure, because I saw something in him, and I wanted to bring him home. But then also re-introduce guys who I think still are incredible wrestlers and are big stars for us. House of Black, I wanted to bring them up. So that was our gameplan for 2024."
But now that 2024 is almost in the rear view mirror, Dax and Cash want to become main event players again, yet they still have hopes of building the division as they showcase to the world why they’re the best tag team on the planet.
"Now, 2025 is rolling around, and I feel like we might have done ourselves a disservice in 2024 by being maybe a little giving, keeping ourselves in the background a bit too much. 2025, I want to continue to build 2025, continue to build out television shows, continue to build our relationship with Max now, streaming on Max, but also selfishly, I want to remind people that FTR is the greatest tag team in the world. Even though we’ve got a little bit of age on us, I feel better physically than I ever have in my life, and I am ready to remind people what tag team wrestling is because unfortunately, I think maybe it took a step back this year, and I think it’s our job and our duty as FTR to bring tag team wrestling back to the main event scene,"
FTR will have a chance to come back strong on January 1st as they’re scheduled to take on three members of the Death Riders. They won’t be coming alone as they’ll be bringing a friend to the fight. The rumors claim that the friend is Adam Copeland, though it has yet to be confirmed. Nevertheless, 2025 should be an interesting year for FTR.