"They tried a couple of times" - Matt Hardy on WWE splitting The Hardy Boyz
AEW star Matt Hardy has opened up about how WWE tried to separate The Hardy Boyz on several occasions.
Long before becoming The Broken One, Matt and his brother Jeff Hardy broke out together as The Hardy Boyz. The duo were one of the most popular tag teams of the Attitude Era and hold a special place in the hearts of the WWE Universe.
However, Matt knew it wasn't going to last forever. On a recent episode of The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy podcast, the former WWE Tag Team Champion spoke about how the company tried to split the team as early as possible:
"I was okay, and I feel like I knew we were staying there. I feel we'd almost kind of been assured we were staying together. They tried a couple of times previously before, you know, to separate us and we knew that was ultimately going to happen, and I think we were both cool with that, but we wanted to get as much as we could out of the Hardys together as long as we possibly could. " [19:58 - 20:20]
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The Hardy Boyz were well aware of their stakes in the company and worked as a tag team as needed. Both went on to have singles runs in the mid-2000s and won several championships in the process.
Matt Hardy reveals that WWE punished The Hardy Boyz for standing their ground
20 years ago today, says the 'net. @OTD_in_WWE https://t.co/OblatXFWCA
Matt Hardy has claimed that the high-flying duo initially rejected the idea of splitting up, which cost them a considerable amount of TV time. In the same interview, Hardy talks about how they decided to take a stand against the inevitable break-up:
"They definitely wanted to split us and we actually ended up standing up for ourselves and we told them we weren't ready to do it. Also, some of the things in the angle we weren't comfortable with and they punished us by taking us off TV for six to seven weeks," said Hardy. [21:13 - 21:30]
Matt went on to explain how the brothers and WWE came to terms after the punishment:
"We still did live shows instead. TV are the big stress days and there's a long day. It was actually kinda fun on the road doing our thing and that's where they put us back together on. They saw that we stood our ground and we definitely believed in what we were saying and we were going to hold our ground. So they put us back together at Royal Rumble." [21:30 - 21:47]
The Hardy Boyz worked together until 2002 when they were finally split. Jeff would depart the company in 2003 after a short singles run. In the years since, they have worked on and off as a team while also enjoying various singles pushes across several promotions.
While using any quotes from this article, please credit 'The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy' and give a H/T to Sportskeeda Wrestling for the transcription.