FTR may have impressed fans for years with their skills in the ring, but Vince McMahon was far from pleased with their performance in 2018.
After an impressive run in NXT, FTR (then The Revival) was called up to WWE’s main roster as part of the post-WrestleMania 33 Raw in April 2017.
Despite reigns as both Raw and SmackDown Tag Team Champions (making the team the first triple-crown tag Champions in WWE) the duo couldn’t match their NXT success on the main roster and were granted their releases in April 2020.
The Worst Match
By the 2018 Royal Rumble, The Revival had been feuding with the Good Brothers and had traded wins on TV and at live events with Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows.
Speaking with Matt Koon on his FTR podcast, Dax Harwood recalled the less than favorable feedback to the match on the Royal Rumble kick-off show.
“We come to the back and Vince (McMahon) is waiting for us, all four of us. We thought the match was good. it was like an eight-minute match. We came to the back and he said, ‘Welp, that was absolutely the worst wrestling match I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
Dax Harwood.
Given that McMahon was closing in on fifty years in the wrestling industry at the time, Harwood joked that he takes having the worst match as a “badge of pride.”
Harwood added that McMahon was likely unaware that he and Cash Wheeler were employed by WWE for eight years.
WWE Return
While McMahon was far from pleased with FTR, WWE today is much different to the one the tag team left nearly three years ago.
Following McMahon’s retirement last July, Triple H has been appointed Head of Creative and Head of Talent, and FTR thrived under the Game’s watch in WWE NXT.
McMahon has (so far) kept away from creative meetings and WWE programming since his return to WWE last month.
It has been reported that FTR’s deals with AEW expire this May, but Harwood claimed in a previous episode of his podcast that McMahon’s return has made them question coming back.