Matt Hardy reflects on the many years that he and Jeff worked as enhancement talent for WWE.
Matt and Jeff Hardy, before they were world-renowned Superstars, had matches on television with names like Razor Ramon and Steve Austin. Jeff Hardy was even working on WWE television before he was legally an adult.
Despite seeming to be a perfect fit for the crazy world of ECW, Matt and Jeff Hardy never worked in ECW or WCW. That is because WWE made a promise to them that they would eventually utilize them and by 1998, they kept their promise and signed Matt and Jeff Hardy.
Matt Hardy recounts those early days during a recent interview with Sean Ross Sapp where he says that he and Jeff considered going to WCW.
“Yeah. There actually was,” Matt Hardy said about he and Jeff considering doing preliminary work for World Championship Wrestling. “Maybe this is why [WWE] told us, they told us late ’96/early ’97, that they were interested in doing something with us. ‘Just keep coming, keep doing what you’re doing. We’re gonna get you more dark matches. We’re gonna look at you and evaluate you.’ We just kinda thought they were full of shit. Then at the end of ’97, they did tell us they planned on signing us. Now I wanna say there was one moment where one of the agents there said, ‘Look, guys, just hang in there. They’re gonna do something with you, I promise. I promise they’re gonna do something.’ They did. They signed us in the beginning of ’98.”
Talking about potentially working with ECW, Matt Hardy says that he and Jeff were going to go on an international tour with the Sandman and they were also preparing for some ECW tryouts.
“Before we signed, we were about to go work with some of the ECW guys. Sandman had an international tour we were gonna do and then we were also gonna go have some tryouts with ECW,” said Matt. “We were close to doing that. We started talking to people in WCW, too. Like you had said, our names had been circulating around enough and we had enough dark matches that people had said, ‘Oh, my God, these guys had a match. They’re pretty good. They’re a decent tag team.’ There was starting to be a little bit of buzz about us. So we did have some other options and fortunately, WWE ended up signing us up.”
After such a unique beginning, both Matt Hardy and Jeff Hardy would go on to have Hall of Fame-level careers. Now it is, Matt Hardy spend a lot of time reflecting on the career that he has had on his podcast, The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy.
The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy drops every Friday at 6 a.m. eastern time on Spotify and wherever else you find your podcasts. You can also see a video version on YouTube. There is also an ad-free version if you subscribe to AdFreeShows on Patreon.
