FTR Reveal How Tully Blanchard Became Their Manager

FTR is one of the few remaining specialist tag teams in professional wrestling. Their old school style makes them amazing heels. The addition of Tully Blanchard has been a perfect fit for the AEW stars.

Recently, FTR revealed the story of how they ended up working with Tully. It all started on Arn Anderson’s iPad. Dax and Cash told the story to The Wrestling Classic. Dax Harwood said once he knew Arn was a fan, they had to have him.

“[Tully Blanchard] had never seen any of our work before because when he was out of wrestling for 30 years, he stopped watching wrestling. He hadn’t watched in years. So Arn made him sit down with him and watch our matches on Arn’s iPad. So they [watched some Revival matches including some of the ones with American Alpha] and he became a huge fan of ours. You know, I pitched to Tony, ‘Hey, why don’t we have this guy as our manager?’ When we came in, we came as quasi-babyface at first? I laid out this whole thing, the Tag Team Appreciation Night. I said, ‘Let’s not turn heel on The Young Bucks. We’ll save us touching for later.’ I said, ‘Let us turn heel on Ricky and Robert and get real sympathy for them, but get real heat for us.’ Then that transitions into Tully being our manager, he set up the whole thing. Tully was completely on board. Tony loved the idea. You know, it gave us a little credibility as a tag team to have one of the greatest tag team wrestlers of all time in our corner.”

Cash Wheeler said that while they worked with another legend who is currently in AEW, Arn Anderson, in WWE, things weren’t quite the same. The creative freedom AEW offers the team an opportunity to apply more of Tully’s knowledge than they could Arn’s in WWE. Cash still appreciated working with Double A there.

“We got to work with Arn for a few years before in WWE. But, we never got to work with Arn without being under the restrictions that he had before because yeah, he’ll tell you, like he’s said it on his podcast, it was just different. Not like it’s a bad thing. But now he just gets to be Arn and if he has some knowledge to add to take up to somebody. He can go up to it and say without anything holding him back. He’s got so much knowledge and he would help us all the time on live events. Because we took a lot of pride in working really hard on live events and changing it up a lot. Not just doing the same thing because it’s easy, and we know what works.”

FTR are the reigning AAA World Tag Team Champions. They’re currently feuding with the Lucha Bros in AEW over their titles and the AEW Tag titles. With the incredible knowledge Tully Blanchard brings to the table, they plan to remain top guys for a long time.

What do you think of the pairing of FTR and Tully Blanchard? Let us know in the comments!

Thanks to Fightful for the transcription!