Dax Harwood Addresses Alleged Unhappiness Within AEW Over CM Punk Podcast
Dax Harwood allegedly received heat in AEW over his podcast comments about CM Punk
Jan 13, 2023
When Dax Harwood launched his FTR podcast, he gained headlines for his comments about CM Punk’s conduct in AEW, with Harwood vocal about the good deeds Punk committed during his time in the company, whilst imploring Punk and The Elite to patch things up and move forward.
Reports suggested that Harwood had upset portions of the AEW locker room for his comments about Punk, but Harwood has since addressed any notions of heat that stemmed from his comments, saying the following on the latest FTR podcast:
“No, of course I’ve heard about it. Everybody’s tweeted me and text me and that’s all I read,” said Harwood. “Um, yeah, apparently there’s some people in the AEW locker room were unhappy with my podcast and that’s okay if they were, but to me it’s funny that I talk to you (podcast co-host) and I told you even before this stuff got out, I told you I had at the very least, 20 text messages from the guys and girls that I worked with who told me how much they love the podcast, how much they enjoyed my thoughts and feelings and how I expressed wrestling and they also enjoyed the fact that I didn’t play either side and that I just told the truth. So for some of the people that are upset with me, I wonder why they’re upset because all I did was paint a company that I’m in love with or that I believe in-in a positive light and all I did was paint a few people that were in the news in a positive light because in the core, I believe that they all are good people. But, I guess some people weren’t happy that I was maybe expressing the true human being that CM Punk is or maybe they were unhappy that I was expressing the true human beings that The Young Bucks or Kenny [Omega] or whoever was, maybe that’s it too.
“So for anybody that’s upset with me, I implore them to please come to me as I would come to you face-to-face and talk to you and tell you how I feel. To all the people from AEW and even all the people, a ton of people from WWE, who downloaded my two episodes, who retweeted my two episodes, who put over the fact that I was well-spoken, I was fair, that I was truthful and the passion, more than anything, the passion that I have for professional wrestling. That’s all I have and that’s all I can tell and that’s all I can portray is what I love and how much I love this because there ain’t too many things in the world, people included, human beings included that I love more than wrestling and so for people to reach out to tell me that and then, God dang man, then I read that people at my locker room is unhappy with me… For someone who has mental health struggles, that did hurt a little bit but then I had to take a step back, I talked with you, I talked with Cash [Wheeler] and they reminded me, you reminded me that it’s not everybody. It’s probably a handful of people.”
Some had suggested that Punk was speaking through Harwood in order to rebalance the narrative of Punk in AEW, with many reports after the events of All Out painting Punk in an overwhelmingly negative light. However, Harwood was quick to state that his comments were his and his alone:
“For the first narrative about Punk, I can give you 100 percent God’s honest truth, he has never told me to say anything. He’s never expressed to me that he wants me to paint a certain narrative about him. I can also tell you to God’s honest truth that he told me, he said, ‘I haven’t even listened to your podcast.’ Guys, he’s a beautiful human being, The Young Bucks are beautiful human beings, okay? All of them are. All I was trying to do was make things right, that’s all. That’s the only thing I was trying to do. Maybe I went too far or maybe it’s not for me to make right. But, in the moment, as a human being who has a heart, who loves wrestling, I tried to make things right and that was all.
“If I was wrong for that and I upset those guys and even if I upset Punk, I sincerely apologise. If I upset my office, I sincerely apologise. If I upset anybody else who’s letting Dave Meltzer know that the locker room is upset with me, if I upset that person, I sincerely apologise, that was not my goal. My goal was to make AEW better, that’s all,” continued Harwood.
H/T: POST Wrestling