Matt Hardy turned on his brother Jeff Hardy for a feud in 2008, and he recently recalled a pitch to delay the heel turn until WrestleMania 25.
At the 2009 WWE Royal Rumble pay-per-view event, Matt turned on Jeff and cost him his WWE Championship, which led to an Extreme Rules match between the two brothers at WrestleMania 25. Following a brutal fight, a crazed Matt walked out of WrestleMania victorious.
On the latest episode of his “The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy” podcast, Matt revealed how some people in WWE pushed for the turn to be delayed until WrestleMania.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On a pitch for the turn to be delayed to WrestleMania: “After Jeff won the title and he did some pretty good numbers in a segment, and people were loving him. His merch was obviously through the roof. There was some people that were pitching to delay the turn, me vs. Jeff, to WrestleMania. And that was something that was on the table for a little bit, which didn’t end up happening. Which, I would have been cool with whatever.”
On what the story would have involved: “That would that would have involved Jeff defending the title in a main event on WrestleMania, and then me turning on him there. But they ended up going with the Rumble instead. And that was probably a little bit of the Man With Three H’s, he was probably pushing for that hard… But yeah, that that was something that was talked about. And it could have been a reality, but they ended up going the other route.”
On who pitched it: “I don’t know, Vince was open to it. I do know that. But there were probably just — there was probably a certain percentage of the writers and creative that were really behind Jeff, because he had so much momentum and and things were hot and it was good. And there were some people that probably were worried about Jeff having too long of a run, and maybe something going wrong.”
On understanding the concern: “I get where Hunter was coming from as well, you know. Especially with stuff Jeff did, because Hunter was all about being a company man. So like I’m not, I can’t fault him for that.”
