Matt Hardy was offered the chance to reunite with a former friend in 2020.
Feeling underutilised at the start of the decade, Hardy made it clear that he wanted to be released from his WWE contract and explore other opportunities. This was also the time when AEW was starting to pick up momentum as Dynamite had only just started to air each week. Wanting to keep the veteran signed and not leave for the competition, they offered a unique creative pitch to Hardy.
2020 was also the point where Bray Wyatt was in his split personality persona of Firefly Funhouse Bray and The Fiend, the merciless masked wrestler. With Hardy also known for his eccentric persona, WWE made the pitch to pair them together once again as part of a new faction.
Speaking on the Extreme Life of Matt Hardy podcast, Hardy revealed that the pitch was made for Broken Matt to join Wyatt in a group that also included his brother Jeff Hardy:
“Then the selling point too, they offered me, there was this pitch. They said, ‘Well, if you do come back, now that we’ve got Windham doing this, he has the Firefly Fun House, where he’s a very comical character and very unserious, and then he turns into The Fiend, he’s like this killing machine.
What if we did something where we put you with him, and you could be Broken Matt Hardy, which was this fun, happy-go-lucky type guy, and you could do that, but then you have this real mean streak character?’ Then with Jeff, we could have him do Willow the Wisp and some other mean-streak characters as well. You could be a little faction.’ That was very appealing, I’m not gonna lie about it.
While the idea did sound tempting to Hardy, he ultimately refused the offer as it would only come to fruition if Hardy agreed to sign a new contract:
But it was just one of those things, they said, ‘We’re only gonna do that direction if you choose to re-sign,’ and then it kinda got to the point where it was like, ‘Ah, they’re kind of using this as a hook, and I see how Vince sees me already, I know what’s happening. So I’m gonna try something else.’ That’s why I ended up trying AEW,”
Hardy and Wyatt teamed together in 2018 after WrestleMania 34 following the two feuding at the start of the year. The alliance would be formed when Wyatt helped Hardy win the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal. The duo captured the Raw Tag Team Championships once together.
Matt Hardy Happy With WWE Exit
Ultimately, Hardy made the decision to not sign a new contract and would join AEW later in the year. Hardy’s final appearance saw him brutally attacked by Randy Orton, who was also in a rivalry with Edge at the time. Looking back at his final WWE appearance, Matt Hardy was very happy with the way he was written off WWE TV.
H/t to Fightful.