Vince McMahon had an unsettling message for Matt Hardy and Edge ahead of their match at WWE SummerSlam.
At the time, Hardy and Edge were locked in a blood feud that blurred the lines of real life and storyline, and it became of the most memorable rivalries in recent history. Their battle at SummerSlam was one of the card's most buzzworthy bouts, and according to Hardy, McMahon wanted to capture the animalistic nature of the participants' hatred for each other.
On the latest episode of The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy podcast, Hardy recalled the discussion McMahon had with him and Edge before SummerSlam. He described how McMahon first wanted to make sure that the two men did not take liberties with each other, given their actual feud.
"Vince McMahon in his mind, he was worried there's going to be tension between myself and Edge. So he called us into his office and he was going to sit us down and talk to us, and also let us know how he wanted the finish of this match to go specifically, in detail. So we walk into the room, and we were getting along good at this time. You know, there were moments where there was some tension, obviously. But Vince was going to talk to us both and make sure to lay down the law, so to say. So I remember myself and Adam, we go we sit in there, there's a couch across from his chair, and we're sitting on opposite ends of the couch. You know, there's probably four feet between us. We're sitting and the first thing Vince says, he says, ‘Adam, Matt, you know, the WWE is my company, right?’ He says, ‘You know that this event, SummerSlam, is my event that I created, right? We both go, ‘Yes.’ He says, ‘You know that I have rented this venue for the night, right? So this is basically my arena. Do you understand that?’ We go, ‘Yes.’ He said, you know, that wrestling ring out there? That is my wrestling ring. Do you understand that?’ He said, ‘I'm going to tell you about this right now. If either one of you go out there tonight and try and take liberties with each other, if you try and intentionally hurt one another, I am the most powerful man in this industry. I promise you neither one of you will ever work a day in this industry again. Do you understand?’ We go, ‘Yeah, sure. ‘We understand,'" Hardy said.
Hardy continued by reflecting on the way McMahon leaned into the psychology behind the match, as he wanted the bout to showcase the primal nature to eat someone who's weaker than you. According to Hardy, this element of the approach to the match came from McMahon's study of psychology.
"Vince continues, “‘Okay, with that being said, I want to get into the psychology behind this match tonight. So it's not going to be a long match. I want to portray this as an MMA fight. This is like a UFC fight, right? I don't want to see any hokey wrestling bullshit. [This] is going to be like a brawl a fight short and effective. Matt's in here, he's kicking the shit out of you. You’re real piece of shit, Adam, so Matt kicks your ass the whole match. Then, you've got some spot, right? You've got some spot picked out where Edge hits a lucky move and then Matt hits the post, right? All of a sudden, his face is a crimson mask, and he's bleeding all over, and that's where you are able to take the advantage, is that the spot you guys have?’ ‘Yeah, that's what we have.’ We told him in detail this what we were talking about doing, and he said, ‘Okay, great.’ I'm gonna explain something to both of you right now, this is really what I want to see. This is basic psychology. This might sound crazy to you. But I have done many, many studies in the basic psychology of human beings and animals. He said, 'Have you ever seen two animals in the wild — in the Wild Kingdom, when they're going to fight one another? Have you ever seen one animal wound another animal? When it wounds that animal and the animal starts bleeding, and it smells the blood, it gets bigger, It swells up, it [growling noise], and it just wants to kill the other animal? Do you know what I'm talking about?’ He said, ‘Listen to me, these are your primal instincts. This might sound crazy, but when two animals — the primal instincts kick in and survival kicks in, and it's their basic primal instincts, and we all have them, even as human beings. If you see someone weaker than you, you see someone that’s crippled or in a wheelchair, deep down your primal instinct, you want to destroy them, you want to eat them, you want to eat them alive! That is what we do. That is what human beings do to one another. That is our basic primal instincts. When you look at a primal human being and the psychology behind it, that is our instincts. You want to take the person who's weaker than you, that is below you in the food chain, and you want to fucking EAT THEM! Do you understand?! That's what I want to see out of this match," he said.
At this point, Hardy and Edge were freaked out, and in hindsight, Matt shared his belief that McMahon was trying to force them to bond with each other over how "insane" he was.
"Adam and I now, we had got so freaked out from Vince's monologue, we were sitting beside each other almost like cuddled like, ‘What the fuck?! Yes, we understand. We will follow this to a tee. Thank you very much, boss.’ As time ticked on down the road, myself and Adam, we think Vince brought us in there and he tried to like freak us out to bond us together. Give us something to talk about and really like, we were on that page. Everything about that match was super professional. But, Vince went crazy. He told us, ‘If you [have] ever seen a crippled person or person in a wheelchair, you want to eat them.’ That's the quote. He said, ‘That is basic instincts, human psychology, us at our core.’ I swear to God, me and Adam have said many times since then, man. Maybe he just did that, to really try and give us something to talk about — how fucking insane he was and that was the psychology behind that it helped bond us before that match," Hardy said.
Hardy recently shared his thoughts on Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks. You can check out his comments here.
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