Matt Hardy has looked back on the early years of his professional wrestling career in light of recent events.
The wrestling world was horrified on January 25th when the details of a lawsuit were made public that accused Vince McMahon of sexually assaulting former WWE employee Jaenel Grant in addition to being accused of sex trafficking. The 67-page lawsuit explicitly names Vince McMahon and John Laurinaitis whilst also implicating that multiple executives, who are not named in the lawsuit, were also a part of the appalling accusations.
On February 1st, Janel Grant’s attorney Ann Callis conducted multiple media interviews to discuss the lawsuit against Vince McMahon. Callis stated that there is a “culture of corruption that has permeated every cell of the WWE” and that “a barrage of people” want to tell their own stories about the toxic culture of WWE.
On his podcast, Matt Hardy was asked by co-host Jon Alba about the culture of the company while he was there. When Alba described the culture as contentious, Hardy stated that it was worse:
“I would even probably use a stronger adjective than contentious. There were some times [when] the culture was malicious, I mean really bad. Not a lot of people [realise], especially with the mentality people have in this day and age. Not saying that in a bad way, just that people are much more caring, giving, open and willing to help everyone out, give everyone chances and opportunities.
The culture when we first came in, the way they would bring you in and haze you, test you and do things to you to make you earn your place in that dressing room. You had to earn a seat, you had to earn a locker in the dressing room. There were some things that I saw done over the course of my first few years that people would be arrested for nowadays. So it was a different business.”
Hardy was asked if he could provide any additional details, to which the AEW star said the following:
“You would see guys that would have heat, and they would just have terrible things happen to them. I saw things where guys had heat where they would take their suitcase as soon as they went out, they would cut up their clothing, they would put it into the shower. I’ve seen where guys had heat, they would be in the showers and guys would make fun of them, say terrible things and push them to limits physically which would horrify them just to put them through it, that was a test. I’ve seen a lot of stuff over the years when I’ve been there, which was like, Whoa, looking back, in hindsight.”
“They Would Not Have Survived That”: Matt Hardy Discusses The Young Bucks
Hardy would go on to reference his 2022 rivalry with The Young Bucks which led to a match between The Hardys and The Bucks at AEW Double or Nothing. Recalling the comment that Matt and Nick Jackson would not have survived the WWE culture, Hardy stands by his original statement:
“I did a promo with The Bucks on a BTE before we wrestled The Bucks, I want to say in Vegas. But there was a thing where I said if you guys would have come up when we came up, you never would have made it. And that was a legitimate statement. They’re both nice guys, they’re both sweethearts, but like a lot of people just could not have survived through that. It’s crazy. The culture was just so different.”
In recent news, Matt Hardy is now a free agent.
If you use any quotes from this article please credit The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy and leave a h/t to Inside The Ropes.