Matt Hardy has weighed in on Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods’ WWE departure, calling it shocking and drawing a surprising comparison to one of the most significant exits in wrestling history while also offering a candid assessment of how WWE’s culture has changed under TKO.
Speaking on The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy, Hardy was asked about his initial reaction to the New Day news.
“Shock. It was definitely shocking. The New Day has been such a staple of WWE, and you think they’re going to be WWE lifers, no doubt about it. And the last thing you expect is, as popular and as prominent as they still are right now, they’re going to be gone from WWE. It was very, very shocking to hear. They were such big stars on a high level. It was shocking. I’m surprised they didn’t really try to figure out some way to make it work.”
“It’s wild too, because, once again, this is, this is a whole new era to me, this TKO to go era of like, you know, restructuring contracts and changing people’s deals. And you know, if you’re not selling x amount of merch, and you’re not selling x amount of tickets, and you know, we’re going to scale you back because we’re overpaying you, or what, you know, I’ve never seen that. You know, once there was a deal, you had that deal, and that’s the deal you’re going to have until you have to resign and you you up it or lower it, or whatever it is. But just to have someone come to you and go like, ‘Hey, we’ve got to restructure this deal. We don’t think we’re making as much money off of you as we’re paying you, or whatever the conversation was. It’s wild. This is all new territory, and it was very shocking, because I feel like those two guys, or two guys that you want around, they’re good for morale. They’re good for the locker room, their experience, they’re good leaders. It was, it was still, it was still very shocking. I understand why it ultimately ended up happening. And I respect them that they’re like, ‘Okay, well, if you want us to take this and you know we’re okay financially, and we’re just kind of go explore the pro wrestling world on our own,’ I can respect that too. They’re going to do great. They’re going to do great, whatever they end up doing. But the fact that WWE could have kept them was shocking.”
“It definitely says it is not the Vince McMahon era. It is definitely TKO, and they’re putting their spin on it. And once again, you know, people were critical of them about just wanting to, you know, make as much profit as possible. They wanted their profit margin to be as massive as it could possibly be. And I mean, it still seems like they’re of that mindset. And even when it comes to talent, if they see that someone is indispensable and they don’t have to be there, then they’re okay. I mean, it’s really very much savvy, savvy business, and it’s not like someone who is really wrestling wired, where you’re like, if you get this real over act who has all this equity, you can possibly get hot with them. Something could start up, whatever else. There were a couple of people that told me they felt like the Kofi and Xavier Woods deal being released is like the closest thing there’s been in a long time to Scott Hall and Kevin Nash whenever they were gone from WWE. I’ve heard that from a couple of people.”
“And what’s crazy about it is, I do think they can be majorly impactful. You know, depending on where they land and depending on how they’re used, if they’re optimized, they definitely can. But I mean that people are going to look at this, and they’re going to go, like,’ I’m going to support the new day, because they were disrespecting my guys, you know, they had to deal with them, and they tried to cut their deal. They want to take less money, but they’ve always been good guys, and they are good guys. And like, you know, now I’m going to support them even more.’ I can see a lot of that mentality coming out of all this too. So it’s going to be really interesting to see where they end up, what they end up doing, but regardless, they’re going to be fine with whatever they end up doing, but it is going to be exciting, and it’s going to add a lot of excitement getting to massive free agents like that out on the market.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
