Matt Hardy was interviewed this week for Chris Van Vliet’s YouTube channel/podcast.
Hardy talked about his exit from WWE and his decision to sign with AEW, why the Broken character works better with a crowd, the chairshot he took from Sammy Guevara, his favorite TLC match, how he created the Broken character, his “DELETE” catchphrase, thoughts on cinematic matches after “The Final Deletion,” Darby Allin and much more.
Here are some highlights:
Matt explained why Jeff Hardy is still in WWE: “Jeff had two major surgeries during his deal. He had shoulder surgery and then he had the knee surgery. He also had some personal time off he needed to take. Altogether it was about a year and eight months. Once that happens in WWE if they still continue to pay you, they can extend his contract so he had a year and eight months tacked on to his deal as opposed to my deal. I worked all the way through without ever being injured, so that is why Jeff is still working there now.”
Matt told us he will probably not be Broken Matt Hardy until the crowds return: “If there had been fans there, with Broken Matt, there are catchphrases and the little nuances and gimmicks of the character and with a live crowd, it is meant to build and pop a live crowd and entertain them and be fun. It’s weird when you think now it is just translating to the TV audience and that’s part of the whole reason why I decided to hold off on Broken Matt and go back to a character-based in reality. It’s the right call, especially because who knows how long we are going to be focusing our product to the TV audience.”
Matt was asked to compare his cinematic matches with the ones WWE has recently produced: “I saw the Boneyard Match. I thought it was great. I thought it was done really well. I think it was one of the smartest usages of Taker they had in a long time. Bray and I are buddies so I watched the Funhouse Match. I thought it was super interesting. For me, considering the way my mind thinks, I thought it was very cool. I could see how some die-hard wrestling fans could get lost in that as well. I thought the bar fight my brother did with Sheamus was awesome. I thought it was done very well. I think wrestling fans should be very appreciative that they are getting these matches like this because we are doing all this during a pandemic era in front of no fans. It’s very hard on us as performers to go out there and work in front of no crowd.”
You can check out the entire interview by clicking on the video below.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription
