Pro wrestling veteran Matt Hardy took to an episode of his “Extreme Life of Matt Hardy” podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including the inspiration behind his cinematic matches.
Hardy said, “It was all about trying to tell a story in a different way. Like, how can you take the pro wrestling medium and tell a story in other different, new, and inventive ways? I mean, that was kind of the whole motivation for having that fight on the Hardy Compound initially. And it just, once again it got so much feedback, and so much of it went viral. And I don’t know if it would, if there wasn’t such a thing as an internet, you know. But it did, and then that kind of caught on, and that led to something in the whole Broken Universe and the cinematic matches and the Hardy Compound.”
On who influenced him to have an open mind with pro wrestling:
“I mean, when I think about being creative in pro wrestling and trying to think outside the box, I remember one thing Michael Hayes said. Which, he was very much an out of the box thinker. You know, he’d come up with some wild ideas and sometimes they’d be outrageous, but he’s like, you know, ‘Don’t ever be afraid like to kind of think out of the lines. Don’t be afraid to think out of the box, because you never know. You might come up with something good. It might suck, but you might come up with something good.’ Those were like, his words verbatim.”
“And he was probably one, just about kind of keeping an open mind and whatever you’re doing. Even if you’re being put in a situation that sounds terrible, like how can you make it as beneficial — even if it’s a bad situation you’re being booked in, how can you try to make it as good as you possibly can? You know, with doing what the boss is asking you to do. And he really opened my mind to a lot of the way my thought process would go into work in pro wrestling years later.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
