Matt Hardy Says He Would Have Handled AEW Debut Differently, If He Could
It has now been three years since Matt Hardy first showed up in AEW, debuting on the March 18 episode of "AEW Dynamite" in Daily's Place, just as the COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold. Hardy initially worked under his Broken Matt Hardy persona for the first few months, which saw him compete in Stadium Stampede alongside The Elite against the Inner Circle, before transitioning back to his regular Matt Hardy persona.
In an interview with the "Daily Mail," Hardy talked about his debut in AEW, and as he's expressed in the past, revealed that if he could go back to his AEW debut, it would likely go a bit differently than it played out on-screen.
"Looking back, in hindsight, if I would have known there weren't going to be any fans for a year-and-a-half and if I knew there was going to be a pandemic, which obviously no one could have predicted that, I probably wouldn't have started as Broken Matt Hardy," Hardy said. "I would have started just as a regular version of Matt Hardy.
"Broken Matt Hardy is such a fan-driven character, you know, just everything he does from the taunts to the people of hearing him say words crazy, whatever it may be. It definitely is driven and fuelled by fans being in the arena. So that's what I would probably have done differently. I would just come in, like Matt Hardy babyface, one-half of the Hardy Boys as opposed to doing Broken Matt Hardy from the jump," said Hardy.
Matt Hardy reunited with his brother Jeff after the latter joined AEW last year, and the brothers team up together constantly on AEW television.