Cash Wheeler defends Dax Harwood: ‘We all need to do better to fix’ AEW/CM Punk situation

His FTR tag partner Dax Harwood has become the de facto spokesperson for CM Punk on the subject of Punk’s possible return to AEW after his post-All Out brawl with The Elite, and recent online spats with Jon Moxley & others.

That’s brought a lot flak Harwood’s way, including accusations he’s using the situation to move FTR higher up the card than they otherwise would be and generally trying to paint The Young Bucks, Kenny Omega & other Punk critics as the heels in this behind-the-scenes feud.

Cash Wheeler, the other half of FTR, has been pretty quiet throughout — as he generally is. But today (April 15), perhaps because Dax shared that he’s seen calls for him to lose his job, Wheeler decided to tweet on his partner’s behalf. He also took the opportunity to make a plea to everyone involved in AEW’s ongoing Punk-centric turmoil:

Dax is one of the best people you could ever meet. Passionate about wrestling and family. Protective over his friends, especially when people don’t know everything. He’s not afraid to speak up, and not do it anonymously. Honest to a fault.

We all need to do better to fix this situation. Everyone involved. No fingers pointed. No one is completely innocent. I respect everyone involved and want the best for AEW. I am tired of reading negativity from both sides, fans and wrestlers. Real life is more important. Enough.

As you’d expect, that brought lots of responses from “Wrestling Twitter”. Cash interacted with a few of those, which included this to someone saying Punk should publicly apologize “before trying to guilt people into working with him”:

Let’s know what’s going on behind the scenes before we type.

Wheeler also had a back-and-forth with one several people who dislike FTR’s association with Jim Cornette. He made it clear neither he or Harwood support all of the polarizing manager & booker-turned-podcaster’s views, and challenged those accusing Dax of defending Cornette to provide evidence of him doing so. In the process, Cash offers praise for several of his co-workers who Cornette has criticized over the years... including Omega & The Bucks:

You have no idea what you’re talking about. Please show me the support? Saying he has SOME good points about wrestling and is entitled to freedom of speech isn’t support. We both disagree with a lot of his views. I think The Elite are great. OC is amazing. Enough with this too

Am I disagreeing with you? I don’t think any of that shit [“racist/sexist views... calling every Japanese female wrestler schoolgirls... Calling Kenny Twinkletoes”] is acceptable. Never have. Neither does Dax. But coming on Twitter and saying this is only going to invite more negativity, so let’s just keep going in circles because it’s so productive.

Finally, when someone said wrestlers should stop using Twitter to air grievances, questioned why Wheeler used the platform for his message, and implied he had ulterior motives, he closed with:

So which is it? We have to come on here to condemn people to make sure you all know, but we can’t use it to say we all need to stop fighting? Last tweet of the day because this is just proof that me avoiding Twitter 95% of the time is the right choice.

There’s a lot to unpack there, and what everyone gets out of it will likely depend greatly on their existing opinions of FTR, Punk, The Elite, Tony Khan, Jon Moxley, Chris Jericho, Jim Cornette, et al.

Which is why the key takeaway here is probably that Cash should have followed his own advice from a couple days ago...