AEW’s Dax Harwood recently announced that he is shuttering his FTR Podcast, as both he and co-host Matt Koon felt that the show was doing “more harm than good” for the wrestling business. Koon took to Twitter on Sunday to answer a question from a fan regarding the show, specifically was there any topic he wishes the pair could’ve tackled while the show was still around? Koon responded with just three words — “Saudi Arabia plane.”
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Back in October 2019, the highly lucrative (and highly controversial) deal between WWE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia saw the Crown Jewel event take place in Riyadh, headlined by Brock Lesnar vs. Cain Velasquez and heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury vs. Braun Strowman. While the show unfolded as planned, more than 200 wrestlers were stuck on the tarmac and delayed for roughly a full day. WWE and Atlas Air both claimed this was due to technical issues, but reports quickly emerged stating there were pay disputes between WWE and the KSA that saw Vince McMahon allegedly stop the pay-per-view feed in Saudi Arabia. This allegedly prompted a response from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that resulted in the wrestlers being prevented from leaving via military police.
While a few wrestlers have either hinted at or openly speculated about what happened in the years since then, nobody has gone on record to officially confirm what happened. Harwood and Cash Wheeler (then known as The Revival’s Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder) were among the wrestlers stuck on that plane, but Harwood admitted that he feared for his safety if he chose to talk about it on the podcast. It’s unclear how much of Harwood’s response was sarcastic, if not completely serious.
Harwood and Wheeler would leave WWE in April 2020 and would arrive in AEW months later. They’ve since found a tremendous amount of success as FTR, winning a variety of tag team championships and establishing themselves as one of the greatest tag teams in the world with numerous standout matches. The pair recently announced that they’ve signed new four-year contracts with AEW and are currently on their second reign as AEW World Tag Team Champions.
AEW Dynamite April 23, 2023 Card
- AEW International Championship: Orange Cassidy vs. Bandido
- TBS Championship: Jade Cargill vs. Taya Valkyrie
- Darby Allin vs. Sammy Guevara (Winner Challenges MJF at Double or Nothing for the AEW World Championship)
- Kenny Omega & Konosuke Takeshita vs. The Butcher & The Blade
- Dax Harwood vs. Jeff Jarrett
- Promos from Wardlow & Arn Anderson, Adam Cole and Tony Khan
