Matt Hardy sets the record straight.
AEW star Matt Hardy was involved in quite the scandal back in 2005 as the world found out that his then-girlfriend, Lita, and Edge had been having an affair. Hardy was released by WWE that year and Edge and Lita started to hear pro-Hardy chants in response, but the ordeal also led to Hardy coming back for a feud that appeared to be quite heated.
Hardy began making appearances and doing “run-ins” to attack Edge that summer, but the pair finally squared off in a match at SummerSlam in 2005. On the latest episode of his The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy podcast, the ‘Broken’ one discussed the booking of the feud and answered the age-old question of, was it a shoot or a complete work?
“Everything in that match went exactly how it was supposed to go,” admitted Hardy to co-host Jon Alba. “And to the individual who asked that question and said they thought it was a terrible booking idea, I mean, I don’t feel that it’s that bad of a booking idea considering that I wouldn’t stop fighting. I was bleeding and the ref stopped it. I mean, as opposed to if I gave up or if I quit or if I just got beat straight out, that would’ve been a much worse booking decision.
“So, the whole idea behind that is we were going to go out and almost have like a UFC or MMA fight and incorporate some pro wrestling into it but it was supposed to be short,” Hardy explained, “like go go go, like a fisticuffs, very violent, very much fighting. I was gonna pick a spot where I was gonna end up bleeding profusely and the referee was going to stop the match. I came up with the scenario that we ended up doing and got some good color in there too, brother. So it came out alright and it was the way it was going to go. Basically, we knew we were going to continue. It wasn’t the end of that story and we wanted to go back and forth, drag this out because we had such a hot issue that so many people were invested in. We didn’t want to give too much away there.”
Hardy went on to say that the good guy (him) getting revenge right away didn’t make sense, and the whole thing still looks good in hindsight and they accomplished their goal.
Hardy and Edge would also go on to have a street fight, steel cage match and a Loser Leaves RAW match before the feud was over, and Alba asked about the working relationship while the feud was going on. Hardy said that they were on good terms throughout the whole thing, noting that there was a lot of trust involved and everyone came out healthy in the end.
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