Matt Hardy recalls his first major singles opportunity at WrestleMania, working with Rey Mysterio for the WWE Cruiserweight Championship.
Most of Matt Hardy's WrestleMania memories are part of the TLC 3 set of tag teams, The Hardy Boyz, The Dudley Boyz, and Edge and Christian, but in 2003, Matt Hardy had the opportunity to be a singles Superstar and hold the WWE Cruiserweight Championship where he would work against Rey Mysterio, in both men's WrestleMania singles debuts.
Speaking on the latest episode of his podcast, The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy, Matt Hardy recalled the build-up to the match and says that despite the original plan, WWE felt it was better for Rey Mysterio to win the title in Anaheim, California, instead of Seattle at WrestleMania.
“We had built up some momentum from the WrestleMania match where we had opened up the show and we had once again, maybe the story of my life, the story of being a pro wrestler, and the story of my career in the WWE, we lost a lot of time right before we went out there," Matt recalled. "So we burned through a lot of that match as well but we were still happy with it, It was a good pace setter of WrestleMania as well and I know we had specifically waited until Anaheim [to switch the title to Rey because] it was the closest location to Rey Mysterio’s hometown, almost against WWE policy, we were going to put over the local guy huge and it was cool because his family was there."
"I was originally going to go into a program with Edge but there were some political forces — WCW had come on board, and I don’t think they were in my corner. I got pushed out of this and Edge ended up working with A-Train,” Hardy recalled. “Adam, at that time, was pushing to work with me and elevate me as a singles as well. Obviously, we had been friends off of our past rivalries and always working together. So, that was out the window and I didn’t get to work with him on the Intercontinental/US Title level and then they offered me the Cruiserweight thing and the story of losing weight and whatever,” Hardy explained.
Hardy explained that he chose to embrace the story instead of looking at it as a downgrade, he believes the story grew because of that.
“I think because I embraced it and looked at it the best we can, I think the initial plan was for me to win the Cruiserweight Title and then probably drop it to Rey at WrestleMania but I started getting over. I was really getting into it and I think even Vince saw how much I was into it and that’s where they changed the finish. The original finish was that Rey was supposed to beat me at WrestleMania, but they changed it so we could drag it out and build it to a bigger match where Rey could end up winning the title because they thought they had some legs to that program,” Hardy explained. “So, that was pretty cool, it was quite the compliment and we ended up going to the big match in Anaheim on the television show. Rey overcame the villain and won the Cruiserweight Title in his home state of California,” Hardy concluded.
For more of an example of the traditional WWE policy of not putting somebody over in their Hometown, Matt Hardy explains why he and Jeff Hardy did not win the Tag Team Championship during the first TLC match in 2000. Learn more here.
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