Matt Hardy says WWE wanted him to re-sign as a full-time producer rather than a wrestler, and that knowing how Vince McMahon saw him is why he did not take the deal.
Hardy left when his contract expired in March 2020 and signed with AEW. Speaking on The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy, he explained the thinking, having first been asked about wrestlers getting stuck in a fixed role.
“There are times, especially in WWE, where you would get kind of cast into a certain role, and they kind of think that’s just where you stick, and that’s just what you do. You don’t really do anything else.”
He said he had experienced it for years, and that so had Christian Cage.
“Yeah, for quite a bit. I mean, it was hard. I think both myself and Christian had that, just because we knew Vince saw the bigger money in both Adam and in Jeff. He liked both of us too. I mean, don’t get me wrong, and he still took great care of us. But at the end of the day, when we worked for Vince, and he saw something a certain way, I knew that was going to happen.”
That is what shaped the contract conversation at the end.
“Much like at the very end before I left WWE at my contract, they were trying to get me to re-sign. But Vince was really trying to get me just to be a full-time producer or coach or agent. And I said, dude, I want to wrestle while I can. If I can still wrestle, that’s what I would like to do.”
He said he could see how the next few years would go.
“And I could just see how he saw me in that role, and I knew if I re-signed there, I might, for a couple months, do this cool angle with me and Windham as the Fiend and Jeff as Willow. But then he is going to put me back into that role because that is how he sees me, and that is what he wants.”
“And Vince always got what he wants.”
Hardy signed with AEW in March 2020 and appeared at Double or Nothing that year. He now works for TNA, both on screen and behind the scenes. McMahon left WWE in January 2024.
