FTR Reveal Brodie Lee's Idea For Them To Be The Radicalz In AEW
To honor Brodie Lee (Jon Huber), Chris Jericho brought on many friends and acquaintances of Lee's to reminisce and reflect on his life and career on a recent episode of Talk is Jericho. Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler of FTR and Christopher Daniels were brought on, and FTR revealed that Lee wanted to team up with FTR to form a new version of The Radicalz in AEW.
The original version of The Radicalz consisted of Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, Perry Saturn, and Dean Malenko who left WCW and joined WWE. FTR noted that their contracts originally were set to expire around the same time. However, things changed with their contract situation as well as AEW's plan to make Lee the leader of The Dark Order.
"We had a group text with him, and he said, 'I want us to be The Radicalz.' Me, Cash and him, he wanted us to be The Radicalz," Harwood revealed. "We had these big, grandiose plans to come in together.
"Our contracts were coming up real soon, until some things happened" Wheeler noted. "His plan and our plan was to be The Radicalz here.
"But he didn't know about The Dark Order stuff, until it was pitched," Harwood pointed out.
FTR also talked about how proud Lee was of his AEW run. Harwood, who bonded with Lee due to their dedication to their families, recalled Lee's desire to go back home after winning the TNT Championship to show his son what he accomplished.
"Like C.D. said, he was so proud," Harwood expressed. "I wish everyone knew how proud he was of this last run he had here.
"It was getting better every week too," Wheeler added. "It's already the most heartbreaking situation I could possibly imagine but knowing how happy he was and how well things were going for him personally and professionally.
"It's easy for people to say, 'Oh, they're saying that because they're with AEW now. I'm telling you as one of my best friends and also a work colleague, this was his favorite time in the business, this was the best work he had ever done and he was so proud of this last run. When he won the belt from Cody [Rhodes], he could not wait to take the belt home to show little Brodie."
Harwood also opened up about what he called "the biggest regret of my career". He said Lee had an idea to take a picture with FTR with their title belts to show their success post-WWE. However, that never happened, and everyone agreed on the idea of "Go be a mark. Take that picture."
"When we won the tag team belts, he sent us both of us individual texts, and he was just telling us how happy he was that he and us, we left WWE, the biggest conglomerate in wrestling and entertainment. We left that place, and we came here and we're all having the runs of our careers," Harwood said. "He told me, 'When we come back to TV, let's go take a picture together. All three of us with our belts and it's something we can keep forever.' I said, 'Absolutely man.' We got here to TV.
"I think he and I were too afraid to go up to the other and say, 'Hey, let's go take that picture together.' We were like, 'Oh, you were serious? You mark!' Now, Cash tweeted the other day, 16 years, almost 17 years of wrestling, that's the biggest regret of my career ever that we didn't get that picture with him."
There were many rumors that Daniels was going to be the leader of Dark Order, and it was something that SCU played along with on BTE. Daniels recalled the original plan for the SCU – Dark Order feud where Daniels would take on Stu Grayson and Evil Uno leading up to a big confrontation with Lee at his debut in Rochester.
"This was something that I don't think was ever planned in the office, but there was scuttlebutt on Twitter that I was going to join The Dark Order, that I was leading The Dark Order," Daniels recalled. "The whole thing came up online, and Matt Jackson decided we should lean into this. Let's do something with Dark Order and SCU.
"We played a little bit with the idea that I might join Dark Order that I was actually The Exalted One. When we found out that Brodie was going to come in, we set up the situation where I was going to wrestle Stu one week and the next week I would wrestle Uno. And the way it turned out, the week Brodie debuted was going to be in Rochester.
"This was the week that the pandemic shut everything down. The last live event that we did outside of Jacksonville was the night I wrestled Stu. The next week would have been me and Uno, which would have been the debut [of Brodie]. The idea was I beat Uno. I tell him, 'There is no Exalted One. It's all a lie,' and then here comes Brodie. And Brodie was going to debut and melee me."
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit Talk Is Jericho with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.