Earlier this week, Matt Hardy responded to a fan in regards to him and brother Jeff competing on an episode of AEW Dark: Elevation. During his podcast, Matt went into further detail about the match and his conversation with AEW President Tony Khan:
“The match was really, really enjoyable. It’s so funny because it was kind of controversial to people. They said, ‘Oh my God, the Hardys are already getting demoted. Jeff Hardy, he was going to go into a program with Roman Reigns, and now he’s been demoted to Elevation. He’s been buried.’ It’s just so hilarious. Like, people just jump to conclusions so swiftly online, especially like in the internet wrestling community, if the IWC is still a thing. I know that was the name of the fan base when it first started. But you know, just wrestling Twitter, and wrestling online, they will take whatever scenario it is and they can paint it to be the greatest scenario of all time, or they can paint it to be the worst scenario of all time. It’s always so interesting to see which way they’re going to push the narrative on it.”
“The actual fact of the matter is, here’s what happened that day. So we get to TV on Wednesday. They’re putting together the card and doing everything. Initially it was going to be a Dynamite and a Rampage on one night, and then they’d split it where the Rampage was going to be live on Friday night. For that Rampage for weeks, there was talk of doing myself and Jeff and Top Flight versus a four man team of the AFO, Andrade’s guys, and that was going to be on Rampage. Then Tony said, ‘Well, I feel like we’re just giving them a Dynamite and I want to give them all the stars that are here. I want to give them the best experience possible. He said, ‘Would you guys be okay moving this Rampage match so they see the Hardys because Dynamite was packed?’ From beginning to end, the card was loaded and there was like no time for anything. He said, ‘We could put a pre-tape in there for you guys, but I want you guys to be in front of the live crowd. Would you guys be okay with doing a live Elevation match? We’ll take that Rampage match that I talked about doing and we’ll just kind of bump it to Elevation and that way the live crowd gets to see you and it’ll be a huge match for Elevation and hopefully that will do a great number online.’ We said, ‘Of course Tony, I mean, that’s what we’re here for. We’re wrestlers. So we are more than happy to do that.’ Especially being early before Dynamite, we were excited to wrestle because we knew that was going to make it that much easier to have a great match because the crowd was going to be more into it because they’re not burnout yet. So the match was so much fun. I know Dante and Darius, they were having the time of their life teaming with the Hardy Boyz. Then once again, anytime we work with Private Party, those guys were so excited and so hyped. It was a great match. I loved it. I loved that we got to interact with them. I thought it was a great seed to plant that, you know, the Hardys and Top Flight kind of have this friend relationship for down the road. I think there’s some interesting stuff that can come out of that. Obviously, down the road, we want to work with those guys in some sort of program or rivalry and do what we can to help continue to establish them and make them into a great tag team and a known tag team.”
