Dax Harwood Reveals He’s Been Trying to Hire Stokely Hathaway for Years
FTR’s alliance with Stokely Hathaway has given the tag team a fresh coat of paint and a new attitude. On the Beyond The Bell podcast, Dax Harwood revealed that the partnership was years in the making—and that he first tried to get Hathaway hired as FTR’s manager in WWE.
The WWE Pitch
“The crazy thing is, is when we were with the other company… We were asking for our release,” Harwood recalled. “I had a meeting with the head of creative, and he asked me what I wanted to do. I said, Stokely his name. I said, I’d love to have him as our manager.”
The pitch was considered but ultimately denied. “And the head of company said, ‘Okay, that’s not a bad idea, but he’s going into something else.’ Stokely was going into something else. So we couldn’t do it.”
The AEW Hiring
When FTR’s partnership with Tully Blanchard was coming to an end in 2021, Harwood made the pitch again, this time to Tony Khan.
“I talked to Tony and I said, ‘Hey, I think there’s this guy in NXT who’s an incredible mouthpiece. He can bump his ass off, and he’s very entertaining. I think he’d be a great gift for us,'” Harwood said. “So Tony hired him at my request.”
The Delayed Pairing
Even after Hathaway was hired, the pairing was put on hold because FTR had become massive babyfaces. “Fans, just all of a sudden started connecting with us on a different level… they started liking us,” Harwood explained. “And so we didn’t want to bring in Stokely to be with us at that time”.
Harwood noted that Stokely’s other AEW pairings didn’t work out and said, “Some of the people that he was with were a little upset that he was outshining them”. But with FTR, Harwood says, “We knew, after 11 years being together, having somebody like Stokely, bringing him on board is only going to make us shine even brighter, which is why we allow him to do most of the speaking. I think he’s the best in the world at what he does right now.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Beyond The Bell Podcast with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
