AEW Dynamite: Update on Cash Wheeler Following Scary Injury

This week’s AEW Dynamite (dubbed Fight for the Fallen) saw the long-awaited grudge match between FTR and Santana & Ortiz. The two heels came out on top — Dax Harwood nailed Ortiz with a Brainbuster — but if the final sequence felt abrupt there’s a good reason for that. PWInsider‘s Mike Johnson reported after the show that Cash Wheeler suffered a “really bad cut” when his arm hit the metal turnbuckle and that the match was immediately pushed to finish while trainers tended to his arm.

Johnson added that Wheeler is reportedly okay. A closer look at a replay of the match shows where the injury happened:

Wheeler and Cash, formerly known as Dash Wilder and Scott Dawson, were granted their releases back in April 2020 and arrived in AEW as FTR the following month. The pair won the AEW World Tag Team Championships from Kenny Omega and Hangman Page in September, then dropped them to The Young Bucks two months later. Back in March the former champs officially aligned with MJF, Wardlow and Shawn Spears to become The Pinnacle.

“What they had, everything they did, was organic and magic,” Wheeler said in an interview with Pro Wrestling Illustrated while talking about why they don’t want to copy the Four Horsemen (this was back when rumors of The Pinnacle forming were spreading online). “That’s why it worked so well. It wasn’t forced or brought up in a creative room by a bunch of guys who had no wrestling experience. It was four guys, plus JJ [Dillon] who all had something special separate, and it worked well together. Tully has given us the details on how it started. Seeing how little the plan was going in, and what it became, is unreal. I don’t think we’ll be ever to truly copy that and do it justice, but it is very flattering,”

“As a team and unit, for what we want to accomplish, it would be a huge disservice to us both. People have asked Flair, Arn, and Tully and they’ve given us their blessing. If we were better wrestlers or talkers, it doesn’t matter because that was a once-in-a-lifetime group that can never be replicated,” Harwood added. “To try and replicate it, you’re going backward. That’s one thing we don’t want to do. That’s why we left our former employer because we don’t want to go backward, we want to go forward. However, the blueprint of the Four Horsemen, is absolutely and goal and theme that we run with,” he said. “There are a ton of talent that could be intriguing and we could turn AEW’s corner and make them, maybe the top wrestling company in the world, by having a group of individuals who work as one unit with the common goal of being the best in the world. That blueprint could change professional wrestling.”

Check out the full lineup for next week’s AEW Dynamite below:

• Cody Rhodes vs. Malakai Black
• TNT Championship: Miro vs. Lee Johnson
• Chris Jericho vs. Juventud Guerrera
• Christian Cage vs. The Blade
• The Bunny vs. Leyla Hirsch (Women’s Championship Eliminator Match)