From the get-go, Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood, formerly The Revival and now The Revolt, have been about one thing; tag team wrestling. Considered by many to be one of the best tag teams in the world, the former champions wanted WWE to focus more on their division.
Coming up from NXT, fans assumed that they, along with teams like American Alpha and DIY, would bring about a tag team revolution. Sadly, that wouldn’t happen. Though that goofy gimmick change was confirmed, that wasn’t why The Revolt left WWE.
Wheeler revealed on Talk is Jericho that they had made the decision to leave by January of 2019 in the middle of their feud with the Lucha House Party.
“It was somewhere around mid-January of 2019 that we initially had talked to somebody in the office and asked for our release. At the time we were told that we were gonna get it. Things obviously change. It was a night, I remember it very clearly. We were wrestling the Lucha House Party.
We had fun with them. I enjoyed working em because they could do so much cool stuff. I liked being a base for a talented high flying babyface.
We knew… we had been told not long before that they were planning on putting the tag titles on us. It was kind of starting that night and that’s when we got our first victory over them. Dax and I had been debating for months whether or not we wanted to stay or not.
Our plan was to get through the last Christmas loop. You make good money on it and spend a lot of time with your close friends. We’d said after this loop, let’s wait until the upswing so it doesn’t look like we’re only upset because we’re losing. That way people will know that it’s not about us, it’s about the tag team division as a whole.”
Wheeler continued, stating that there are too many good tag teams in the company to have a division treated so poorly. The Revolt simply wanted the workers in their corner of professional wrestling to be treated with respect.
“The tag team titles, they don’t really mean anything. Nothing against Braun, I think Braun’s a great guy. I get along with him really well. He steamrolled the entire tag team division and a ten-year old won the tag titles at WrestleMania. No tag teams were featured at SummerSlam until the last minute where the Women’s Tag Titles, which I’m all for. It’s just that it’s so last minute that the people don’t even know.
We wanted to make a point like, ‘Look, the tag team division doesn’t get respect. It doesn’t get the time that we think a lot of these teams deserve. We wanna take chances on ourselves. That’s why we asked when we asked. It went on for a long time, fifteen months to the day and we finally got the release.”
Harwood followed up, saying:
“When we asked for our release in January, we went straight to the top and asked for it. I think initially they may have thought we were just bluffing. They said, ‘well we were planning on putting the tag titles on you and planning on giving you this big run.’
Daniel (Wheeler) said verbatim, he said, ‘Look we don’t care about winning the tag belts. We want the whole division to be featured and to be given an opportunity to work.'”
There were small glimpses of hope for the tag division over the years. SmackDown, specifically, saw The New Day and The Usos deliver some incredible wars over the Blue Brand’s tag titles. However, outside of them, the division didn’t get a lot of time to shine for the most part.
The Revolt said that they’d busted their asses in 2019 trying to change how management felt about the tag division. With such a strong roster, they had the talent there to make something special. Sadly, it wasn’t in the cards. WWE did all they could and threw quite a bit of money at Wheeler and Harwood. In the end, though, it wasn’t about money or gold.
Please be sure to credit Talk is Jericho and h/t Wrestling-Edge for the transcription if these quotes are used.Â
