During a recent edition of his “The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy” podcast, TNA veteran Matt Hardy shared his advice to the sixteen Superstars released by WWE last week.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On the wrestlers who have been let go by WWE: “In all honesty, if you weren’t hot enough to keep the job — if they didn’t think you were a value to retain you at that time — then maybe it is time to think about doing something different and doing something new. Once again, that’s their perspective. You are going to have a built-in audience and fanbase because you have been on WWE TV which is the biggest, most penetrating global television in the world. You have been on that TV, so you’re going to be a star, and people do know that. But I think it’s a great time to experiment and try and do something new, and try and do what you feel like you want to do. Whenever you do stuff on the indies or somewhere else, you get the opportunity to do what you believe in, what you want to do when it’s all said and done.
“You don’t get to do that on WWE TV a lot. A lot of times on WWE TV, you’re given marching orders, and you follow those. And that’s what they want, that’s what you go out there. But this is your chance to really take the bull by the horns and try and determine your own destiny, and that’s what I hope people are willing to do. It’s hard work. It’s scary in the beginning, but after doing it two or three times — after you get released two or three times, it kind of becomes old hat. It becomes second nature when it’s said and done. I hope these guys will accept that challenge and they’ll be willing to go out, they’ll be willing to bust their a*s and work hard. And hopefully show WWE that they made a mistake by releasing them because there was a ton of potential in that performer.”
On not being critical of other promotions: “One thing I would say is learn how to not be overly opinionated when you’re talking about other promotions. Like, learn how to shut the hell up and just worry about what you’re doing, speak positively, and stop talking negatively about other places. Because if you do get to that point where you do get released and you’re gone, then you’ve kind of screwed yourself up from going somewhere else. Just be real smart. Think about that; pro wrestling is a small world in the big scheme of things. There’s a lot of places to do it now. But don’t burn bridges before you have an opportunity to go somewhere else, just in case. You never know.
“The best thing you can possibly do is if there’s something you don’t like, just shut the hell up about it. Just talk about what you do like, what is positive, what is good. And that’s actually one of the issues that comes with social media. There are people that respond to wrestlers on there, on wrestling Twitter, social media, non-stop. Just negative this, negative that, ‘I didn’t like this, I didn’t like that.’ If you’re a wrestler, if you’re a performer, be better than that, be smarter than that, and learn how to just talk about the things that are positive, the things that you like, and let your grievances go.”
