Matt Hardy says that there were plans for him to be paired with Bray Wyatt again that could have included the WWE debut of Willow The Wisp.
Bray Wyatt was one of WWE’s top superstars for the eight years that he was on the main roster. During his time, Bray Wyatt was paired with Matt Hardy in 2018 and they were WWE Raw Tag Team Champions. eventually, Bray Wyatt would go away and come back as The Fiend. That character was a major portion of the pandemic era of WWE and even briefly held the WWE Universal Championship, before losing it to Roman Reigns seven days after capturing it.
Bray Wyatt would go on to have a program with Randy Orton that would cover the fall of 2020 until WrestleMania 2021. The match with Randy Orton at WrestleMania would be his last as he would stay away from WWE before being released in the summer of 2021.
Speaking about Bray Wyatt’s release, Matt Hardy, on the latest episode of his podcast, The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy, says that he was surprised by the release and says that there was briefly a pitch for Bray Wyatt the once again be paired with Matt and Jeff Hardy before Matt Hardy was paired off with Randy Orton in his final WWE angle in 2020.
“It was shocking. I mean, because he was one of the biggest merch movers they had. That's usually a pretty important, pretty important part of performance longevity around there. If you're selling a lot of merch, usually that means you're making money. You know, so it was very shocking, very disappointing. I don't even know if it was because he'd re-signed a contract it was too much, and they were just like, it's one of those things, it's very much a business now more than ever.If they have a guy that they think is making too much money, no one is index spendable, and they've built the brand around WWE. Vince McMahon doesn't need anyone's Superstar at any certain time. They've really built it all around WWE and that is what is the draw. "
Matt Hardy then explained that there was a pitch for him to work with Bray Wyatt when they were trying to get him to re-sign.
“There was a pitch to get me to try and re-sign my contract, or whenever I was doing that angle with with with Randy. They were also going to do something besides the angle with Randy Orton. They said a big match with Bray at WrestleMania and they said, ‘What if we did something now where Bray is doing something as “The Fiend”, and people are trying to stop them. Then all of a sudden, there's an appearance of a very hardcore Matt Hardy that shows up and then like this Willow The Wisp or just a hardcore Jeff Hardy this shows up. Then they like squash these guys out and run them off whatever, like save “The Fiend”, but they're very serious characters. But then we see the talk show where Bray is the Mr. Rogers character and he's talking to all the kids and he's having the show. Then you see ‘Broken Matt,’ he shows up, and then Willow The Wisp shows up and they're part of the show as well. So you guys are like him. But you work as a tag team, you have like a Fiend type of character versions of yourself. Then you have a ‘Broken Matt’ and a Willow and then you're also doing the deal,’ which sounded very cool and awesome, but I also knew at the time, that would probably last six or seven weeks, and then it would be done. So I was already mentally checked out and AEW-bound.”
Elsewhere in this interview, Matt Hardy spoke about explaining the “Broken” Matt Hardy character to Vince McMahon, who became fascinated with the idea of him cutting promos in a planetarium. Learn more here.
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