2020 was an incredibly important year for the WWE Universe, even if fans weren't aware of it at the time. Bray Wyatt's Fiend character was going strong, even if some fans were getting tired of the gimmick, Drew McIntyre was in the middle of a pair of WWE Championship title runs, and a number of the promotion's young, ascending stars and mid-card specialists alike were about to be fired, leading to a bolstering of rosters in AEW, Impact, and beyond.

Though things could have shaken out much, much worse for Matt Hardy, as he was able to close out his WWE run with a well-received angle alongside Randy Orton before being allowed to take his “Broken” ways to AEW, things also almost shook out much better too, as, in a recent appearance on his Extreme Life podcast, Hardy explained how he ended up working with the “Apex Predator” and his pitch for a new faction within the WyattVerse that would have seen both Hardy Boyz becoming residents of the Firefly Fun House.

“That was, I wanna say it was Vince's idea, and it came to me via Michael Hayes and Bruce Prichard. I think they talked about it, and there was an idea about re-signing and doing a program with Randy for a few weeks, five-six weeks on TV, maybe having him hurt me and then come back out and fight him and do a couple other matches, this, that, and the other thing. There was a tag in there somewhere, I think, they had an idea about,” Matt Hardy explained via 411 Mania.

“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. 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.”

Would it have been cool to see both of the Hardyz in the Firefly Fun House? Sure thing, Matt and Wyatt had great chemistry, and adding Jeff into that mix could have been incredibly cool, too. Unfortunately, it will now have to go down as one of WWE's big “what ifs” of the last decade, as that option is no longer on the table for obvious reasons.

Braun Strowman celebrates the late, great Bray Wyatt's mic skills.

Speaking of Bray Wyatt, another one of his former WWE collaborators, Braun Strowman, recently discussed working alongside the “Eater of Worlds” in an interview with Bill Apter of Sportskeeda, and let it be known that, in his opinion, the fallen “Fiend” was one of the best talkers in the history of the business.

“Bray Wyatt was, in my opinion, the epitome of talking on a microphone with his character work, being able to go in and out of all these multiple characters, see his facial expressions change, hear his voice change,” Braun Strowman explained via 411 Mania. “I don't know anyone who's done it, other than Paul Heyman, who's just been timeless with what he does as a manager and stuff like that. But he still doesn't have the range and abilities to go through these multiple different characters that Bray had inside of his head. So in my opinion, it's Bray Wyatt.”

When Wyatt returned to WWE in October of 2022, he didn't wrestle very much, as he worked just one match before passing away over the summer. Still, despite his light workload, Wyatt remained one of the most popular performers in the WWE Universe, with his weekly SmackDown segments a must-watch for fans despite them almost always comprising of nothing more than a promo and a creepy video package at the end. If that isn't the sign of an all-time great talker, then I don't know what is.