Matt Hardy thinks TNA is right to have varied the stipulations at Lockdown, and that gimmick matches stop meaning anything when a company runs too many of them.
Lockdown takes place on Sunday, August 23 at the Credit Union 1 Arena in Chicago, with every match contested inside a cage. Hardy, who works for TNA on screen and behind the scenes, was asked about the card on the Extreme Life of Matt Hardy. He is in the main event.
“It’s one thing that I do like, that they made a stipulation for one of the matches. I think it’s Moose versus Frankie Kazarian. It is Escape the Cage. The other ones are pinfall or submission, but I like the fact that that is a little different, because you need as much variety as possible when every match is the same match over and over.”
He said the same applies to wrestling generally.
“I’m a big advocate. I say this all the time. I think wrestling is at its best when it’s a variety show. It has a little bit of something for everyone. I think the same thing over and over ends up being repetitive, and I hope everyone takes a different stance in the way they go about their match at Lockdown, and I’m sure they will.”
Asked whether running a full card of cage matches risks devaluing the stipulation, he said it does.
“I think it makes it very easy to water down the stipulation and make it seem overexposed. I think those things are best when used sparingly, in important situations, and when it makes sense. That’s the time to do those matches.”
“It means so much more in the context of the full story, and also it means so much more to the audience if there’s really a good reasoning behind having a specific type of match, whether it’s a TLC match or a ladder match or a tables match or a cage match.”
He also described how TNA prevents matches from repeating on the same show.
“There are times where they will just check between matches. Like, okay, there’s a table being broken here, so we don’t want any tables in this match. Or there’s somebody using the stairs here, so we don’t want any stairs in this match. And I think TNA is really good about that.”
He said AEW was working on the same problem while he was there.
“That’s something that I think AEW, especially when I was there, they were working hard to improve upon, because things were happening in multiple matches. Specific stuff like that, using a certain object or breaking a table or a chair or whatever else it may have been.”
“It is important to try and lay out the show so it doesn’t seem like it’s repetitive with the same thing happening over and over, and each match seems fresh into its own.”
Hardy compared TNA’s approach to preparation with what wrestlers arriving from NXT are used to.
“That’s one of the great things I could tell when people from NXT would come to TNA. They’re like, oh my God, you don’t have to rehearse this. You don’t do the entrance. They don’t really have down specifically what they want you to do. And I go, no, that’s part of the magic here.”
“They just give you, hey, this is what we want out of this, and you make it happen in whatever way you think is best. That’s one of the things that I love so much about TNA, is just that creative freedom.”
He included himself in the exceptions to it.
“There will be times where Jeff and I, and I would probably say Nic Nemeth, we’re all kind of exceptions. If there’s something we’re really set on that we want to do, we usually can do it. But we don’t want to do every single thing under the sun every single night. We want to be smart about stuff whenever we do it.”
Hardy and his brother Jeff defend the TNA World Tag Team Championship against the Nemeths, Nic and Ryan, in the main event. Nic Nemeth is the TNA World Champion but does not defend that title on the card.
The rest of the show is Xia Brookside defending the Knockouts World Championship against Elayna Black, Jason Hotch defending the International Championship against Mustafa Ali, Cedric Alexander against Leon Slater for the X Division Championship with Slater’s previous reign to be struck from the records if he loses, Rosemary and Allie defending the Knockouts World Tag Team Championship against the Elegance Brand, Elijah against A.J. Francis, the Moose and Kazarian Escape the Cage match. A Lethal Lockdown match pitting the System against Ricky Sosa, Fabian Aichner, KC Navarro and Jada Stone.
TNA ran Lockdown every year from 2005 to 2016. The last one was at Wembley Arena in London, where Hardy beat EC3 in a cage to win the TNA World Championship.
