With a wave of former WWE talent reaching free agency this week, Matt Hardy has two matches in mind, and one of them may already be in motion.
Speaking on The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy, he was asked what he expects from the group whose 90-day non-competes have lapsed, which includes the Motor City Machine Guns, Aleister Black, Kairi Sane and the members of the Wyatt Sicks. Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods are not far behind, with their non-compete expected to run out in early August following their May exits.
Hardy singled out a couple of names before dropping a tease.
“I’ve seen a lot of videos by Joe Gacy. I think he’s going to do great. He’s going to be very motivated,” Hardy said. “I think the New Day guys are going to do some good stuff coming out of this.”
Asked whether he assumes they are AEW-bound, Hardy did not disagree, but suggested there may be a window before that.
“I would imagine they are. But I do think there might be an opportunity to get a Hardys and New Day thing in right before, because we have something that is being worked on right now, so we’ll see,” Hardy said, adding that “it might even be near you.”
The other match he wants is one that has somehow never happened. Chris Sabin and Alex Shelley became free agents this week and have already teased their next move in a video posted to their YouTube channel.
“That’s exciting. We still got to get that match, man. We got to get the Hardys and Motor City,” Hardy said. “We’ve never had that match. How crazy is that? That match just never happened. Of established tag teams, I feel like that is really the only team we’ve never faced, and of several generations.”
More broadly, Hardy pushed back on the idea that a WWE release is an ending. He reached for a Walking Dead metaphor, fitting given TNA’s home on AMC.
“A lot of people feel like, oh, I went to WWE, I was there, and then I got released, so my journey is over. But it’s not at all,” Hardy said. “You can be safe and live comfortably in Alexandria, but if you go outside, you can still survive and you can still thrive and you can still do really well.”
He offered himself and his brother as proof.
“Right now it’s crazy. Jeff and I are 51 and 48, about to be 52 and 49, and we’re doing as good as we’ve ever done,” Hardy said. “It’s like we’re having a great year as far as being profitable, still doing good things. It really is up to you to be very smart and be able to navigate yourself in the world of pro wrestling.”
His advice to the class of free agents was to take advantage of the market.
“Right now, wrestling is booming, and there’s more wrestling out there than there has been in forever. So there’s so many great opportunities, and I hope these guys all capitalize on it,” Hardy said.
Hardy also noted that non-compete timing has already shaped his own booking, including the run with The Righteous that just wrapped up.
“We had thrown around some ideas if the non-compete clause had been a little earlier,” Hardy said. “It was a funny time period, even as far as our deal with The Righteous goes, because we’d talked to some people about doing some stuff, but we had to wait a little bit because the non-compete wasn’t up yet.”
