Matt Hardy On TNA’s Future, Teaming With Jeff, Owen Hart And More

Matt Hardy recently spoke with Danny Stone of Royal Ramblings in the UK. Below are some highlights:

You’re back in TNA and working a programme with Team 3D (The Dudley Boyz). What’s it like being with them again?

Its good fun! It’s like a time warp. It’s so strange. We’ve been separated and we haven’t been in the ring with those guys for about 12 years. You know as soon as we start working with them, we start having memories of old matches we had in Peoria Illinois – random cities across the world, it’s a great dose of nostalgia. I think it’s cool because we’re all at a point where we can still go pretty strong in the ring and have a great match and not disappoint the people. We don’t just get dressed up and come out as the Dudleys and the Hardy boys and play around for a couple of minutes, we can actually get out there and do an older version of ourselves and still kick ass and that’s pretty cool.

You are back to being a tag-team with Jeff after a successful career as a singles wrestler. What’s the allure of tagging again?

Every time now – especially as we get older – that I team with Jeff, it’s truly magical. We grew up as legitimate blood brothers and it’s a magical moment because our whole dream was to one day be the tag-team champions of the world and we did that multiple times. So anytime someone asks me, even if I’m embarking on the greatest singles run of my career and no-one can touch me, I would always go and work with Jeff. For me that’s as good as it gets because that’s what we always wanted to do when we were children. Few people get to live that dream and so, well anytime I can go back and team with Jeff, I’m certainly up for it and gonna love it.

What does the future hold TNA and Spike TV?

I’m really not sure. You know things came out and Spike have extended TNA and they’ll try and work it out but a part of me believes that similar to a relationship that comes through a turbulent period, it’s time to move on and look somewhere else. If the right scenario is found and they have a good TV partner, it could turn everything around for TNA. You have to wait and see and timing is everything, so we’re on Impact wrestling on Spike through the end of the year and we’ve got a few months until then and it’s going to be really interesting to see how things unfold. I think things are going to be fine here at Impact wrestling – and I don’t even have to say that because I’m not someone that’s under contract or a strict employee of the company. There’s so much speculation and conjuncture online but I think things are going to be absolutely fine here.

What does this sort of speculation do to wrestlers working for the company?

I’m at that point where I’m basically a brand in myself. At the end of the day I know that Matt Hardy is going to be OK and I know that appearing on Impact wrestling is only going to make me stronger. So I don’t need to think twice about it. For other guys it can be difficult. Younger guys, newer guys that aren’t really sure where their futures going to be, they have bills to pay they have families to feed. Speculation is also highly, exponentially accelerated by online reports now and that’s just the state of the game. Every internet journalist is going to print a story and put up what they think is a “scoop” and put their spin on it. No-one knows the true story except the people in TNA that are dealing with the TV people and that’s it!

We’ve heard some pretty great rib stories from TNA wrestlers, so give us your best one..

Oh man! There’s so many of them, even going back to the day when we were first learning about the art of the rib. Well, I first learned from probably the most famous ribber – that was Owen Hart. Even when we were first starting on TV as part time workers, Owen was always constantly up to different jokes. Probably the greatest rib I’ve ever been involved in happened at a pay-per-view event where Owen used me as one of the guys to stand guard and make sure that Vince McMahon and the office guys didn’t leave the building. He told them not to leave a specific room they were in because he told them that there was some emergency across the building. In the meantime, he rushed all of the hoardings that they bought for the set into Vince’s office and they crashed and ruined it which was pretty hilarious and also pretty gutsy on Owens part to rib the boss like that.