By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Insight With Chris Van Vliet with guest Matt Hardy and Jeff Hardy
Host: Chris Van Vliet
Podcast available via Podcasts.Apple.com
Jeff, how’s your neck doing?
Jeff: “It’s better. This past Monday and Tuesday, it felt really good. Then we flew out here, and I fell asleep a little funky on the plane. I remember jerking my head up one time, and it hurt. So it was hurting a little more than it did Monday and Tuesday. But overall, man, it’s feeling good. It’s definitely better. So this has been a little over three months now. I’ve been dealing with two bulging discs on the left side of my neck, and this happened when we dropped the titles at the NXT Halloween Havoc show. It was one of those things, you couldn’t even tell, it looked completely fine. I landed flat, but I was on the big guy’s shoulders. The one guy jumped off the ladder, clotheslined me off. The idea was for me to go through the table, but I kind of overshot the table, and he just broke the table, and my head just hit the mat, and it was a little whiplash like that. It felt terrible. I mean, it definitely felt like a concussion, and I was close to being knocked out, but that’s when it happened. Two bulging discs on the left side of my neck, but I’m feeling much better.”
When you talk about thinking like this might have been the end with this injury, how much do you guys think about the end of your career?
Jeff: “I try not to think about it, especially with seeing the (John) Cena retirement tour, naturally, because we’re the same age. He’s a little older than me, but I’m 48, and I’m like, oh man. AJ, same age, he’s talking about maybe retiring soon. I mean, I think about it, but the way my career has went over the years, the ups and the downs, I just hope I can do it for as long as I can. I think that’s the way I’m going to do it, because after this neck injury, I feel like my performances are naturally going to get 1,000 percent better, because I’m so excited about this whole AMC deal and being in TNA and continuing to evolve. But yeah, I try not to let the thought of the end enter my consciousness.”
Matt: “Wrestling Twitter has been trying to retire us for years now, and they still do. They’re trying to book our retirement matches nonstop. But we feel good. As long as we feel good, we’re gonna keep going.”
There is so much history with you guys and Team 3D. What a special moment to be in there with the Dudleys for their final match. Were all of you guys crying in there?
Jeff: “I think we were.”
Matt: “It was definitely emotional. So I’ll tell you this, I’ll be fully transparent. D-Von, we just wanted to get him through this last match. We knew he was retiring, this was it. We want him to go out on this great match with career rivals. We had no idea they were going to both take their boots off, and we definitely didn’t know they were going to give them to us. Jeff had just asked at the end, ‘Hey, is that a thing?’ I said it wasn’t, but I think it is now. He [D-Von] said ‘What we’re going to do at the end to show you the respect and say you guys have won this battle. Whoever wins this is the greatest of all time. We have something we’re going to do, but we don’t want to tell you, is that fine?’ I said, that’s great. Let’s just do it in the ring. Let’s get a very authentic, genuine reaction, and that’s what that was. More than anything, we just wanted D-Von to be okay in that match. We tried to protect him as much as we could. He’d had some serious health issues over the years, and we were going to bust our ass to work as hard as we could, because those guys haven’t been working a lot. Bully has been working here and there, doing some stuff. But we wanted to bust our ass, and we really wanted to tap into the emotion behind the match. What was great, even in the beginning, we had to start the match so the crowd would stop chanting. So the crowd was so involved in it, and they were so emotionally invested, and that’s what made it feel so special.”
That spot at WrestleMania 22 with Ric Flair. When you suplex him off the ladder is wild. They’re reiterating he’s 57, so he specifically asked you to do that spot?
Matt: “Yeah, so they needed a spot. They wanted a spot where Ric was going to say he was hurt and be carried out of the match, and he was going to come back in the end, and he said, ‘I have an idea. Matt, I trust you. I know you’re one of the creators of this ladder match. Will you suplex me off?’ He said, ‘I’ll be honest. You’re the only person I trust doing this match.’ And he also told Edge that whenever they had the match, he said, ‘You’re the only person I trust to have this match with, because I know you and The Hardys created this ladder match nonsense.’ And I said, ‘Sure, that’s cool.’ I remember we talked about the spot, and we had a rung Ric was gonna be on, then I was gonna suplex him off. I remember we’d gotten to that rung as we were fighting, and I said, ‘All right, you ready?’ He said, ‘No, higher, higher, higher.’ I was like, Okay, we went up one more, and he took that bump like a champ and got him over. He was safe and sound. And he said it was great. He said it was an easy bump. He would always do that. He would do the deal where he would flip over the corner, run to the other side, coming off. He said, ‘If I can do that every night, it shouldn’t be that bad off the ladder.’ Afterwards, he said, ‘It was easy. Thank you. Yeah, it was good. Thank you.’ He said, ‘You took care of me, made sure I got over. I didn’t land on my head, and that’s all I wanted. Thank you. You’re the only person in this match I trust to do it with.'”
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