Matt Hardy drops The Extreme Life Of Matt Hardy podcast every week.
During the latest installment of the popular pro wrestling prorgram, the WWE legend and one-half of the current TNA World Tag-Team Champions with brother Jeff Hardy spoke about The Hardys recent appearance on Kai Cenat’s stream, the much-talked about botched finish to the Women’s title match on the September 26 episode of WWE SmackDown and how Vince McMahon used to handle similar situations during his time in the company.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the episode where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On TNA Wrestling starting to rise up after hearing how they were being ‘a puppet’ for WWE and NXT: “There’s been a theory out there that TNA is NXT and WWE’s puppet and the more that grew and the more that they made it sound like TNA is less than, I think the guys started to rise up a little bit. They started to rise up and the next thing you know, they all pop up at NXT. Everybody’s fighting and they’re not going to take it anymore. I’m one of the guys that said, ‘Hey man, you guys, especially people in Florida, you should go down there. You should let them know. You should voice your opinion.’ So now, we’re on the brink of war and the war happens this coming week.”
On the much-talked about botched finish to the WWE Women’s title match on the September 26 episode of WWE SmackDown: “My takeaway from it was first and foremost, it was unfortunate. I would guess that three of these ladies had a pretty good match leading up to this point and it was pretty unfortunate that happened with the finish. It is what it is. It’s live TV, shit happens, mistakes happen. It seems similar to what you’re saying, like there was going to be a breakup and then eventually still a cover. I do feel like whenever the ref started counting, the ref probably should’ve finished counting.”
On how Vince McMahon used to insist referees finished the count in any situation: “I do remember back early back in the day, Vince in the mid-2000s, he would be real upset if someone didn’t kick out and the ref didn’t count to three. He made a big deal out of it, he was very adamant that he wanted his refs to count if somebody didn’t kick out. I remember when we returned in 2017 to 2020, there was a point where you would get fined if the wrestler you were counting their shoulders down, if they didn’t kick out and you stopped the count. It’s tough for those refs too because the ref doesn’t want to f**k up the finish. Everybody was kind of on different wavelengths right there and you could tell.”
On Mr. Beast putting together The Hardys appearance on Kai Cenat’s stream: “I had met a guy a couple of years ago who worked for Mr. Beast. He said, ‘Oh, we’d love to do a collaboration with you at some point, let me get your info.’ I said, ‘Oh man, my kids love Mr. Beast, they love his chocolate bars.’ It was so wild because earlier in August he said, ‘Hey, September is coming up.’ He said, ‘I’d love to get you out to Kai Cenat because he’s the biggest streamer in the world right now and he streams for the whole month of September.’ I was like, ‘Oh, that’s cool. That’s cool that we were invited.’ I had no idea how big this guy was and how massive he was.”
On being alongside President Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey as people on Kai Cenat’s request list for guests and other notes about the appearance: “TK is the guy that contacted us to work with him. TK, so funny, confused so many people when I told them. TK tells us, he’s like, ‘When we were sitting here talking about doubt Mafiathon 3, let’s put together who is your dream list, Kai?’ He said the first three people he named [were] Oprah Winfrey, Obama, The Hardy Boyz. It was wild man. When we got in there, a whole bunch of people came to visit us in the green room because we had to wait like three and a half hours before we go on with the way this thing was live. He was in this huge ass mansion. We drove and went through three different security checkpoints getting there, it was crazy. It felt like you were going to the White House. We got in there, a guy came and said, ‘Man, I don’t think you guys know, to like everybody, you guys are cultural icons.’ The way he said it like that, I ripped that and put it in that tweet I put, which was pretty cool. It’s pretty cool the crossover audience that we have built over these decades of being pro wrestlers.”
(H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.)
