AEW star Matt Hardy took to an episode of his “Extreme Life of Matt Hardy” podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including what made WWE Hall of Famer “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair’s dynamic with “The Icon” Sting special.
Hardy said, “Flair’s had a lot of retirement tours (laughs), just for the record. Retirement matches/ tours. I mean I just; Sting still felt like he was a young upstart at that point and he just; he felt Ric carried him. He felt like Ric is the one who made those matches great, made those matches indelible.”
“Made those matches memorable and it really elevated Sting. It brought him up to a top level at that time. So I think he’ll always be grateful to Ric Flair because of that. I think Ric gave Sting, gave Steve a lot of confidence back in those days.”
He also talked about whether Sting was his guy growing up when watching WCW.
“He was the guy. Two of my favorites as baby faces were Sting and also (Lex) Luger. (Ric) Flair was like; still there would be times where Flair was a heel and I would be pissed off at him or not like him. But then there’d be times Flair was a baby face and I would like him but I did like him just because he was from North Carolina (laughs). He was announced from North Carolina and I guess currently lived in North Carolina.”
“But yeah I would say Sting and Luger were probably my two favorite guys at that time. Also somebody or an act that hit real hard too was Michael Hayes and Jimmy Garvin. They were hugely influential to me. That’s kind of like; High Voltage (an early Hardy gimmick) was a combination of Sting, I tried to talk like Lex Luger. I used my hands a lot whenever I would talk. I was very much a hand talker because Luger did that and that is where I got it from. It is a compulsion. I remember he hit that line time, he did his arm across ‘because it is a compulsion. ‘I must become the World Heavyweight Champion’. But The Fabulous Free Birds too. A lot of the stuff I did when I first started molding myself as a wrestling character which was High Voltage which would ultimately become Surge and we would venture out on the independents, a lot of the stuff I would wear and my demeanor and my swagger had a lot of Free Birds in it. I had some Lex Luger speak and then I also had some; a little bit of Sting stuff in there as well. I guess I had a haircut like Sting when I started.”
You can check out the complete podcast below.
(H/T to 411Mania for transcribing the above quotes)
