Dax Harwood recently appeared on Nick Hausman’s Haus of Wrestling podcast for an interview covering all things pro wrestling. During the discussion, Harwood commented on if it affects his thinking when he sees the way WWE has pushed Cody Rhodes:
“If I told you no, then that’d be a complete lie because it was pretty out in the open what happened with AEW and Cody. So WWE could have snatched him up and really done whatever they wanted to because he wouldn’t be able to come back to AEW. But seeing that they took him seriously and they have allowed him to be a big star definitely had me and Cash analyzing it way more than we would have before. They’ve done a great job with him and Cody has done a great job with himself too. He’s been given the opportunities, but it’s all about what you do with the opportunities because he could have been given an opportunity and just squandered it. But he believes in himself, man. I’m very, very close with Cody. We talk probably, at the very least we talk once a week, and I’m very proud of him, and I’m sure he’s proud of us as well. But yes, it definitely made us reevaluate the things we could possibly do in the future.”
His on Chad Gable and Otis:
“You know, “I think Gable is always up for the challenge. I think he thinks he is the best, and I think he wants to prove that he’s the best. I myself, I can’t speak for Cash, but I myself also think I’m the best and that’s what made for great matches with him and Jason Jordan is that the two teams wanted to be the best. The two teams wanted to blow each other up. The two teams wanted to outwork each other and we wanted our bosses to say, ‘Man, you were on tonight.’ We ended up having a great professional relationship, but that turned into an even better personal relationship. I think Chad Gable is the most underrated wrestler in the world right now. I don’t know if anybody else comes close to him.”
“We had the matches with those guys that you saw on TV and they were awesome. But the matches you didn’t see on TV when we were going 30 minutes, 35, 45 minutes and he never would blow up. That’s kind of me and Cash’s MO is to blow people up because we would get a kick out of it. We couldn’t blow him up and same thing with Jordan.”
“Otis, you know, I think we got along well in WWE. I know that I and Cash were saddled with teaching him towards the end of our run there. If you see some of the house shows and stuff like that, we were working with him and Tucker. Tucker was always Grade A. He’s a great professional wrestler, too. The chips just didn’t fall in his favor, for whatever reason.”
“Otis on the other hand, still had a lot to learn and we were saddled with teaching him that. I think sometimes like always, I can be a bit abrasive and say, ‘Hey, you know, you might have dropped me on my head tonight and you need to be careful’, or, ‘Hey, you gotta you got to be up for this.’ I would try to teach him things, but sometimes my way of teaching is the way I was taught, you know, from like my father, who could be very abrasive. He could be very mean and scary. So maybe that’s where Otis, you know, or maybe he just doesn’t give a f**k. I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t care if we come or not, and that’s what she said, by the way”
“I love Gable. I would love, love, love, love the opportunity to have at least one more match with him. because he is so talented.”
You can check out the complete interview below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
