WrestleMania 35: 4 reasons why The Usos vs. The Hardy Boyz will not happen
The Hardy Boyz reunited in February 2019 when Matt Hardy surprisingly moved to SmackDown Live to help Jeff Hardy defeat The Bar in a tag match. At the time, it looked as though WWE made the decision to put the legendary duo back together in order to build towards a WrestleMania 35 match with The Usos.
However, the SmackDown Live tag division has not been treated as a priority ever since the storyline between The Usos and Shane McMahon & The Miz came to an end at the Fastlane pay-per-view last month, and Matt & Jeff have only featured sporadically on Tuesday nights since joining forces again.
Even though the rivalry between the popular duos never officially kick-started on WWE programming, both teams teased a possible WrestleMania 35 match on social media, notably during Fastlane when Matt tweeted “Cya soon” to The Usos after they retained the SmackDown Tag Team titles.
Despite multiple teases in recent weeks, it was announced by WrestleMania host Alexa Bliss on the latest episode of SmackDown Live that The Usos will defend their titles against Aleister Black & Ricochet, The Bar and Rusev & Shinsuke Nakamura at WrestleMania, meaning The Hardy Boyz will take part in the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal.
With “The Show of Shows” just a few days away, let’s take a look at four reasons why WWE decided against a match between the two duos on April 7.
#4. WWE wants more teams on the card
In 2017, tag team wrestling was revitalized in WWE, with matches including The Hardy Boyz vs. The Bar and The New Day vs. The Usos regularly stealing the show at pay-per-view events that were mostly built around singles matches.
In 2018, however, there was a major decline in the quality of 2-on-2 matches at WWE’s biggest events. The Bar vs. Braun Strowman & 10-year-old Nicholas made for a unique WrestleMania moment, but it proved to be the beginning of an eight-month run of below-par tag team storylines on both Raw and SmackDown Live.
Following The Revival’s reported request for their releases in early 2019, as well as AEW’s promise to focus on tag teams, WWE has attempted to make more of an effort with storylines involving tag teams on their weekly shows, especially with Scott Dawson & Dash Wilder on Raw.
Perhaps WWE made the decision to scrap The Usos vs. The Hardy Boyz in order to showcase as many duos as possible (The Usos, Aleister Black & Ricochet, The Bar and Rusev & Shinsuke Nakamura) in a match at WrestleMania, allowing The Hardy Boyz to enter the title scene at a later date.