Matt Hardy recently shed some more light on the situation surrounding the Jeff Hardy vs. Sammy Guevara bout from AEW Rampage on February 14 that led to “The Spanish God” getting suspended by All Elite Wrestling.
During a new episode of his official podcast, “The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy,” the TNA Wrestling star reflected on the Jeff vs. Sammy bout from 2/14, which saw Hardy suffer a broken nose and Sammy get suspended by AEW for not properly following concussion protocol.
“What I can tell you is that whenever we had that match, I think we had half-ass convinced Tony Khan to try and let us do either a new gimmick or turn us heel, or whatever else, because apparently that was his mentality behind booking Jeff to lose some matches back to back on TV,” Hardy said. “He has this match with Sammy, and the deal happened where Sammy landed on him, he was bleeding, they stopped it, and I do know they wanted him to go straight home there. I think Jeff, probably on autopilot, but [he] was still pretty aware of what he was doing, came up, and they went into his finisher, the GTH, whatever, and they did it, and Jeff was okay. But I think they had asked him not to do it, just to go home, and I think Doc Sampson was the one saying, ‘Just end it now.’ I think they would have been fine if he would have just grabbed him and rolled him up or whatever it maybe have been, just hold him down because he’s hurt. They took that as Sammy was defying orders. I think just that and they said there were a couple of other incidents, whatever, they did, they suspended him, and it was legitimate, that suspension. He was gone for a pretty long time following that.”
As he continued to touch on this topic, Matt revealed that the post-match injury angle with him getting in Sammy’s face was always part of the plan, regardless of Jeff suffering a legitimate injury along the way.
“At the very end of the match, the stuff where I came in, I was trying to flex, I’ve gotten into great shape, I was ready to rock and roll, I had been ready to rock and roll,” he said. “That was something we planned already. We were gonna do [that] in an attempt to transition into whatever we were doing next, even if we’re this over-the-top delusional GOAT tag team who ultimately portray babyfaces, or if we end up becoming heels, we wanted, we knew as The Hardys, we had been so beaten so much for so long and devalued to a degree. We wanted to turn the corner, and we wanted to do something new to kind of get a fresh start, and that’s kind of why we had that at the end. That was always the plan. If it had been a regular match and Jeff hadn’t gotten hurt, I was still gonna get in the ring, I was gonna take off my shirt, we were gonna flip behind off, we were gonna tell him to go fuck himself, and then we were gonna leave, and then he was gonna get attacked or something at the end. But that was part of the angle and story we were trying to tell. But immediately because he’d gotten hurt, and they tied Sammy to me getting hurt, they’re like, ‘Matt Hardy’s like, ‘Fuck this guy, I’m coming in and I’m gonna tell him to go to hell, and maybe we’ll get into a shoot fight, and it’s gonna turn into the UFC.’ But it was one of those things, that stuff was planned to happen as it was anyway, and that was gonna be part of our story that we were trying to tell, and it’s so funny that the Internet ran wild with that.”
Check out the complete episode of “The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy” podcast at Apple.com.
(H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.)
