All Elite Wrestling has announced the upcoming debut of its first ever video game, titled 'Fight Forever'.
The multi-platform offering aims to deliver a modern equivalent to classic releases from what is considered a 'golden era' for wrestling-based games, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. However, the emergence of recent news regarding the initial roster of playable characters on launch day has caused quite the stir.
It appears that, at least when the game is first made available to the general public, popular tag team FTR — one of the hottest acts in AEW at the moment — will not be selectable to wrestle as.
This turn of events, perhaps comparable to Ken or Chun Li not being playable on Street Fighter 6, seems to have since been confirmed as nothing ominous regarding the duo's status in the company, and many fans are speculating that the end result is Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler being the headline feature of a future add-on (known as downloadable content or 'DLC') shortly after the first release.
In an in-depth exclusive interview with DAZN's Steven Muehlhausen, the duo made it clear that the situation was not one to read too much into.
"We've known about it for a while now," said Wheeler. "And it's really not that big of a deal.
"I'm not gonna go real in-depth with it. I guess how we found out bothered me. But once we got an explanation, I was fine with it. Like I said, it was months ago.
"For the most part, you want to know why. You want an explanation because being taken out or something like that could be bad. But it wasn't. We moved on. It's been months now.
"Yesterday (Sunday), we were at a show all day in North Carolina. We had a seminar starting at 10. Then we went straight to a meet and greet. The show had already started by the time our meet and greet had ended. So we go straight to the back, change, get ready for the match, and then drive back to the Charlotte airport because I had a flight at like 10:30 last night. That's when I realized that the s— hit the fan.
"I was like, 'What is going on with my phone right now?' I don't know why the news came out yesterday, because we've known about it for months. We got it resolved. We figured it out. That was really the end of it for us.
Harwood added: "After that, we didn't care that we weren't in the video game. We cared that we were pulled out when we initially heard about it. We cared and thought we had done something wrong.
"Then we found out the reason why. And we're like, 'Ok, that's fine.' Because we don't care about video games (laughs).
"What I care about is leaving a legacy behind in professional wrestling and being able to take care of my wife and daughter through professional wrestling. And that's it and having fun with my best friend. That's all. We don't care."
"As soon as we found out it wasn't bad news, it was fine," concluded Wheeler.
"But when you're told you're taken out of the video game, you expect the worst because you don't know why.
"You find out why. It's good. Ok cool. That's really the gist of it. I don't know what happened yesterday. But my God, what a day."
You can read the entire excellent interview with the 'Top Guys', which includes a detailed account from their own perspective of the recent CM Punk headlines, and how they compare to some of the very best tag teams of all time, here .