After weeks and weeks of detailing the finer details of his wrestling future, it's official: Matt Hardy is a free agent.
That's right, as he detailed on his Extreme Life of Matt Hardy podcast, the “Broken One” reflected on why he opted to let his deal expire with AEW and why he isn't shutting any doors just yet as he works through his options.
“Sunday night going into Monday morning at midnight, that is when my contract expired. So yes, I am a free agent right now. Just negotiating, talking, I have interacted with everyone. I'm still interacting with AEW and that's where we're at right now. Whenever my deal ended up running out, that allowed me the opportunity to negotiate and speak to everyone available, really weigh my options. That's what I'm doing right now,” Matt Hardy explained on his Extreme Life podcast.
“If you're an indie promoter and you're listening to this, I have gotten so many texts and emails and stuff from independent promoters and whatnot. I'm going to hold off on that for a little bit. I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing in the big scheme of things, and then I'll go from there. I'm working on things. If you don't hear back from me, don't take it personally, because I'm very overwhelmed with all the people who have reached out and requests, especially indie promoters, but I'm working to get back to everybody as much as possible, and I'm figuring out what I'm going to be doing. I'm in no rush to do it. I'm also going to say that I want to make sure I go to the best place possible. I don't want to make a quick decision. I want to make sure that I'm doing the right thing for me long term. So that's where I'm at.”
Would Hardy leave AEW for WWE when his brother Jeff Hardy is still under contract with Tony Khan's company and could be for an extended period of time due to his extensive list of injuries and issues that could rack up contract extensions? It's impossible to know, but considering how things shook out for him and his brother in WWE last time, it's worth wondering if this isn't so much a negotiation but instead a wait-and-see to find out if TK ups his offer.
Matt Hardy weighs in on the CM Punk footage from AEW Dynamite.
Elsewhere in the detailing of his Extreme Life and times on his podcast, Matt Hardy commented on CM Punk's and Cody Rhodes' pre-WrestleMania 40 interviews with Ariel Helwani ahead of the “Showcase of the Immortals,” which were both very focused on AEW and have since become a major fixture of Tony Khan's own booking.
While Hardy gets why WWE did what they decided to do in booking the interviews and why CM Punk decided to pull a CM Punk, in the end, he's still incredibly proud of Rhodes and AEW because having an alternative in professional wrestling is very important for the long-term strength of the business.
“It definitely created a lot of chatter which is good buzz for the WrestleMania event. I mean, people were definitely talking about it, people were talking about CM Punk’s comments. As far as some of the things he said, to me, it’s very CM Punk. For better or for worse, it was very CM Punk. It's very much who he is. The Cody stuff was cool. I love how Cody still has great respect and greatly acknowledges the Bucks and Kenny and Tony just for starting AEW because it is so important to the industry, and that’s just one of the reasons I’m just such a big fan of AEW. Because, it is important, I think it’s paramount for the health and the survival of the industry because competition just makes everything better,” Matt Hardy explained via Fightful.
“It gives people that, are moved out of one place, another option. It’s a huge positive no matter which way you slice it. I do love that Cody does acknowledge those positives about it, and I think the fact of the matter is that AEW is going to be a very controversial subject when discussed on any kind of WWE programming, specifically depending on who the person is. It’s hard, and I know we talk about this, especially with you being a journalist talking about having checks and balances. When someone starts ranting, they’re not able to go all the way into their narrative and can’t control their narrative where you can issue checks and balances and keep them in check. That’s something that is very interesting here because you have some guys that can do that themself, and then you have some guys that don’t want to do that at all, and they just want to take their narrative and push it to the end and that’s kind of how I’ll leave that.”
You know, you have to give it to Hardy here. He wouldn't be able to negotiate a great deal with AEW—or, in an AEW-less world, with WWE—if he didn't have another big promotion that could pay him a similar sum to further push for better terms. Like whichever promotion you like, but AEW plays an important role in the wrestling ecosystem that no performer wants to see go away.
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