One chapter Dark Side of the Ring never got to was the Hardys walking out of TNA in 2017, and Matt Hardy says that is a shame, because he thinks it belonged in the same section as Jeff Jarrett hitting rock bottom with his alcoholism.
Speaking on The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy, Hardy said he and Jeff were fully intending to stay.
“That was also where we were negotiating to re-sign with TNA, and we were committed. We were all in,” Hardy said. “And Jeff Jarrett had great ideas for broken universe stuff and different things we were going to do. I remember he had pitched for a big party when I was doing the King of Gold, that was like my first vessel again, something that was 1,800 years old. He said, oh, I have this, and we’ll do the celebration. We’ll bring these guys in, and we’ll make it like this. It would be very dramatic.”
The problem was what came after hours.
“But then there would be times where at two in the morning he would send Jeff and I these really negative vulgar texts, like if you don’t sign right now and take this money, blah blah blah, and I’m going to do this,” Hardy said. “And he would call Jeff often.”
Hardy said the calls landed harder on his brother than on him, because of how close the two were.
“Me, on the other hand, I had a relationship with him, but him and Jeff were very close, because when Jeff first went to TNA, they remained pretty close friends,” Hardy said. “I was just like, Jeff, when he calls you saying that, if he is being vulgar or being rude, you don’t have to deal with that. It is what it is. Just stand your ground, because I kind of did on my end. But Jeff was like, well, he’s kind of going through it, and I get it. I wanted to be better or whatever else.”
The deal fell apart over more than the texts.
“Then there was money that Ed Nordholm had promised us. And then when Jeff came in as talent relations or his right hand man, and he was going to control more and have the same creative, everything else, which I know that’s what he wanted to do. He wanted to get back in the saddle, because TNA is Jeff Jarrett in so many ways,” Hardy said. “Without Jeff Jarrett, it is not in existence.”
That was the point where the Hardys decided they were out.
“But then we just said like, hey man, we’re not down with this. And we had gotten the broken stuff so over,” Hardy said. “And then as soon as our contract was up, we’d been reached out to by WWE, and they offered us a real good offer to go back, and obviously we returned, and that’s when the magical WrestleMania 33 moment happened.”
Hardy said the company had been planning to build everything around them, and that ownership came to his house to say so.
“Len Asper from Anthem, he came here to our house to talk to us a couple times, just because his whole thing was get the Hardys, the Hardys. We have to get the Hardys locked down. That’s it, and we’re going to build a show around them, because they’re so hot right now,” Hardy said.
That, he said, is why he expected the documentary to cover it.
“One of the reasons I thought they would probably include that is because you had all the components. You had myself in an interview. You had Jeff in an interview. You had Jeff in an interview too,” Hardy said. “You tell that story of the AAA incident, where Jeff was out of control, that ends up sending them to rock bottom. And also part of that in that time was myself and Jeff leaving, because they were going to build the whole company around us. Us leaving was, I felt like, a pretty big blow to TNA at that time. So I felt like that was a good way of telling that story about Jeff reaching rock bottom, with how all that stuff went. But it is what it is. They chose to go the direction they went, and it was what it was.”
Hardy said he and Jeff also talked at length about the current version of TNA in their interviews, and that did not make it either.
“I wish they could have dug into TNA a little more of like what the current thing was, because Jeff and I, we did comment on where TNA is now and how hard we worked to get there and kind of how things happened,” Hardy said.
For all of it, Hardy said the finished product did right by Jarrett.
“I think they did a great job by Jeff, because the story was told real well, from his upbringing into getting into the business, kind of ups and downs, his path, how he got to where he was, walking out on WWE, holding Vince up for money,” Hardy said. “And him being fired once Vince acquired the rights to WCW and bought WCW, and then he’s just like, if I can’t go there, then what am I going to do? Wrestling needs an alternative. And he went out on a limb and started TNA, which is a ballsy move. That’s a huge investment. That’s totally time consuming. That dictates your whole life. TNA would not exist if not for Jeff Jarrett. So that credit will always go to him.”
