Obviously, being a part of a tag team means having responsibility toward a partner as well, and Harwood explained that this was at the forefront of his mind as to why he hid it for as long as he did. “I felt that FTR was on a momentum high there and I wanted to not take myself and Cash off of the road,” Harwood said. But, following a match this past weekend with Blackpool Combat Club on “Collision,” the hematoma blew up to “at the very least, the size of a football,” according to Harwood and with that, the pain became far too much to handle.

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“I felt that we were an important part to AEW,” he added, “to ‘Dynamite,’ and obviously, more importantly, to ‘Collision.’ [but] I had to get an X-ray on my lower back and on my pelvis [and when I explained how long I’d been hiding it], Doc Sampson immediately took me off of the road.”

At this point, Harwood detailed, failure to rest up properly could even potentially lead to an early retirement for the not-yet-40-year-old. “Obviously, I don’t want that,” he said, before noting that from this point forward, being completely honest with his bosses, and with the medical staff was of the utmost importance. “Unfortunately,” Harwood leveled, “or maybe fortunately for some of you people that don’t like FTR, myself and Cash will not be on television for a while.” He ended the post with further apologies to Sampson and his medical team, and to Khan before saying he hoped to see everyone soon and, of course, FTR’s trademark, “Top Guys, out.”

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