Matt Hardy has weighed in on the WWE unionization conversation surfaced by Kevin Nash’s recent comments, telling The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy that collective bargaining could realistically work at WWE and AEW because of their billion-dollar ownership backing, but that imposing it across the entire industry would close smaller wrestling companies.
The conversation came after host John Alba quoted Nash’s recent commentary from his Click This podcast, where Nash argued that WWE talent should be classified under SAG-AFTRA-style protections and that endeavor-era WWE cannot have it both ways with 1099-classified independent contractors and corporate-level executive compensation. Hardy framed the response in terms of company size.
“It would be nice. It depends. You kind of have to wrestling is so different because there’s so many different categories. Between like WWE and AEW, with the financial backing that those two companies, those two brands have, like that is something that could be feasible. It could be possible there, you know, and I can see where they could unionize to a degree. But it would be hard for other companies to do that. And if professional wrestling as a whole had to completely do that, some other companies would be just out of business because they wouldn’t be able to handle that. They wouldn’t be able to cover all that, you know, with covering a certain amount, or covering insurance.”
He named insurance as the central practical hurdle.
“You can imagine how expensive it would be to insure wrestlers, guys who are going out to break their bodies every single week. You know what I mean? John, you hear that all the time, where, you know, maybe I should stop wrestling. Just trying to get in the office, brother, so I can get insurance, get my insurance paid for, you know, there’s guys who will say that or do that with bigger companies. So that is one of the things that is very challenging, the whole insurance deal.”
Hardy did endorse the idea of contract protections that would prevent companies from going back on guaranteed deals.
“As far as being able to have some sort of unionization, where there was like some sort of control and people were regulated, that would be great.”
He proposed a two-tier solution where smaller companies could still operate with independent contractors but the bigger companies would have collective-bargaining-style protections.
“The smaller companies, I feel like they would have to kind of carve out their own niche, where you would have to be independent contractors, but you would truly be independent contractors. I feel like myself and Jeff, we are like the epitome of the independent contractors right now at TNA with how it is. As long as we do their TV dates, we’re all good. We can do whatever we want, and that’s great. That leaves us so many opportunities to make money in so many different areas, to make other other money and other ventures and try to do things, even beside wrestling.”
“It would be nice if there was, especially with these bigger, billion-dollar companies, it would be nice if there was some sort of control, or you had some sort of guarantee, where when you signed a deal, what you signed it was going to hold up, and you know, you weren’t going to be asked to cut your money in half.”
Hardy directly endorsed the specific feasibility for WWE and AEW.
“Once I get, I definitely think that could happen with WWE or AEW, because they have, they have billion-dollar backers.”
The Kevin Nash union pitch, made on his Click This podcast, has prompted a string of public reactions from current and former wrestlers, with JBL on Something to Wrestle this week also calling a WWE union conversation “possible” in the TKO era specifically because the operating environment has become more corporate than the Vince McMahon-era WWE Hardy and JBL came up in.
If you use quotes from this article, please credit The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy and include a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
