The year is 2016, and The Revival — Dash Wilder and Scott Dawson — are tasked with opening one of the biggest shows of the year, WWE’s NXT: TakeOver Dallas. The previous 12 months have seen Wilder and Dawson establish themselves as a tag-team to watch in a division suddenly reinvigorated with powerhouses, flashy personalities and exceptional athletes. Yet amid all the bombast, The Revival, coupled with their “No flips, just fists” slogan, withstand as the no-frills glue that keep the company’s tag-team engine running.
Standing across the ring from the ultra-over and the incredibly athletic American Alpha, fans mock the NXT tag-team champs, serenading them with “which one’s Dawson, which one’s Dash.” But over the next 15 minutes on this night, a switch flips. By match’s end, the audience no longer cares who is who. They’re captivated — and more importantly, they’re invested in the outcome. As American Alpha capture the tag belts, the fans erupt. And in defeat, the moment cements The Revival as foundational pieces of wrestling’s next tag-team boom. It also becomes a catalyst for what they accomplish over the next 10 years.
More than a decade later, The Revival is now known as FTR, with Dawson and Wilder now stylized as Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler in AEW. They’ve built a résumé unlike anything we’ve seen in the modern day of professional wrestling. They’ve won championships everywhere they’ve been — from WWE’s NXT to “Raw,” and “Smackdown,” New Japan Pro Wrestling, AAA, Ring of Honor, and now three times in AEW.
And they have an opportunity to add to their legacy on Sunday night at Double or Nothing, when they defend their AEW World Tag Team Championships against living legends Adam Copeland and Christian Cage in an “I Quit” match. The stakes couldn’t be higher, as an FTR win means the permanent end to “Cope and Christian” as a tag-team.
“We weren’t just lucky to be 6-foot-3, 6-foot-4 and really good-looking and get placed into wrestling when it’s at an all-time high,” Wheeler tells Uncrowned.
“We came in with no plans. We came in with no fanfare. Nobody had high expectations for us, and we just made ourselves undeniable to the point where they had no other choice than these 5-foot-10 guys from North Carolina were the best they had.”
Legacy and making history are some of the biggest driving factors in motivating a tag-team that’s already done it all. When you’ve been here as often as FTR, the pressure isn’t quite as intense, even when it’s as unique an opportunity as Sunday presents.
“Going into New York, going into Double or Nothing, you can’t take anything away from the legacy and the careers of Cope and Cage and what they’ve done,” Wheeler says.
“Both of them, multiple-time World Heavyweight Champions, multiple-time Tag Team Champions, and the greatest tag-team of their generation. But I think for us, it’s just one more step, one more feather in the cap, one more coup, and one more bit of proof that we are the greatest tag-team of any generation. So for me, it is another night at the office, but it’s also one more step for us to further cement ourselves as the greatest to ever do it.”
The tension between these two legendary tag-teams has been building for more than a year. At one point, Rated FTR — a team of Wheeler, Harwood and Copeland — were legit challengers for the AEW trios belts. But they couldn’t get the job done, labeled Copeland the problem, and strung together a series of beatdowns that pulled Copeland’s former best friend turned enemy, Cage, back into the fold.
“The guys have had a great little nostalgic run and they’ve brought fans a little bit of joy over the last year of them teaming together,” Harwood says.
“And it just so happens that New York City is going to be the last time that anybody will see Cope and Cage together as a tag-team. So that’s history in itself for the tag-team match and for FTR. But the mindset is the same — go in there, be the greatest tag-team of all time, and walk out still three-time AEW World Tag Team Champions.”
In a challenge between two all-time great teams, it’s also a battle of generations and the natural comparison to their bodies of work. Ask FTR, and there’s little debate.
“Well, I think starting off what separates us from Adam Copeland and Christian Cage is, yes, they may be the greatest tag-team of their generation, but if we’re being honest, and, we’re putting all ego aside, they had two other mediocre tag-teams to compare themselves to: The Hardy Boys and the Dudley Boyz,” Harwood says.
“Their generation didn’t have the depth of talent that FTR does. I mean, you think about it, we will go down as the greatest tag-team of this generation, and we’ve had to compete with American Alpha, the DIYs, the New Days, the Usos, the Young Bucks. You keep the lineage going of tag-team wrestling, the Briscoes, the Motor City Machine Guns. Those are the teams that we’ve had to compete with, and we still come out on top, and we still are at the top of the list when people talk about greatest tag-teams of the generation.”
There’s a short list of other teams that could contest FTR’s place in history. The New Day, fresh to the free agent market, could stake their claim right there next to FTR with a body of work that is as rich in legacy as it is singularly placed after a lengthy WWE run.
But the message from FTR is simple: Don’t bring your ice cream cart.
It’s a totally different world in AEW, they say, as a company that doesn’t have 60 years of equity to drive the machine. That requires a different set of skills, a different mindset — and they’re hopeful to see Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods sooner rather than later.
“I don’t think we’ve ever really had the chance to go two versus two against those guys without there being any restrictions on us, without there being any sort of — I don’t want to say anything too negative, so, without there being too many things that you’re not allowed to do,” Wheeler says.
If Kingston and Woods do make the leap to AEW, they’re landing in a place committed to growing the art of tag-team wrestling.
In a day and age when athleticism and match quality are lauded, AEW has built the foundation of its tag division on two generational groups in the Young Bucks and FTR.
“We kinda helped kick-start and revive the tag-team division across the globe,” Wheeler says. “I will give the Young Bucks their credit, because they were doing something like that all across the world in Japan and Ring of Honor at that time. But we were the only two teams that were really fully dedicated to being a tag-team and wanting the best for tag-team wrestling. We had a phenomenal run in NXT, and we worked really hard on the [WWE] main roster run.
“We just knew that wasn’t the place for our vision of tag-team wrestling, and so we took a chance and we left. I would say we have gone above and beyond to help elevate tag-team wrestling across the world on every level. The tag-team scene has grown exponentially since we’ve left WWE and went to AEW in 2020, and I feel like us and the Young Bucks were two of the biggest driving forces behind that. But more than anything, I think that we are the heartbeat of the tag-team division, not just at AEW, but tag-team wrestling across the globe.”
At the end of the day, Harwood says, there’s no other place that’s going to give you a 58-minute tag-team match on free television like AEW did with FTR and Bullet Club Gold. There’s no other promotion that’s going to feature a dog-collar tag-team match like their emotional tilt with the Briscoes. Or the multiple dream matches they’ve had with the Bucks.
“That’s all because of Tony Khan,” Harwood says, “and so a lot of the credit has to go to him and his vision for AEW.”
For the duo to continue doing what they’ve done at such a high level, it all comes down to a love of the game. It goes beyond tag-team wrestling, even though Harwood is quick to point out the black eye that lingered with tag wrestling before AEW came around.
Wrestling is subjective, and there’s an acceptance that FTR won’t top everyone’s lists when considering all-time great tag teams. Every night they walk through the curtain, though, they’re intentional about trying to leave wrestling better than they found it.
“I have too much passion and too much pride in what we do, and what we’ve done in our careers, to ever feel like we can rest on our laurels and just kind of coast and collect a check,” Wheeler says.
“That’s never going to be something that either one of us are OK with. Dax has said it a lot before, but we love wrestling almost to our own detriment, where we’re willing to go out there and keep sacrificing everything that we can to put on a show, to make sure that tag-team wrestling is left in good hands, to make sure that there’s something for people to want to fight for, to make sure there’s other tag-teams that see us and they say, ‘Hey, we want to take that spot. We want to be where they are.’
“And until that day comes, I think we’re just going to keep loving what we do, taking pride in what we do, and beating the hell out of anybody that tries to take it.”