Matt Hardy Shares How The Hardy Boyz Nearly Ended Up In ECW

On the latest episode of Extreme Life Of Matt Hardy, the TNA star talked about having an opportunity to go to ECW while working enhancement matches for WWE. You can check out some highlights below:

On working as enhancement talent for WWE during the Attitude Era:: “Yes, we are both very grateful that we got the opportunity to work for the WWE, and we’re also both very grateful that we had the opportunity to wrestle during that era. You know, when most wrestling fans were watching wrestling on TV, and wrestling was just so popular. It was just insane. Like, even once we started full-time on the road with WWE in 1998, I remember when we were wearing the tights back in the day, before the Young Bucks bit our style. And I love to joke to the Young Bucks about that, it’s my favorite. And whenever we’re wearing our tights with the plaids or the flowers or whatever it may have been. We would go to hotels, like whenever the TV events were, when we were on developmental deals and we had our hotels, we had our rental cars paid for — if I could get the rental car, because I was only 24 at that time. Usually you had to be 25 to technically get it.

“But we would pull up these TV hotels where there was a hotel book force because we weren’t making a ton of money. But I mean, there would be 400, there’d be 500 people waiting on the WWE wrestlers to be there, just at these TV events. And then I remember the first WrestleMania that we were part of, and we were there for the whole week. Which was [WrestleMania] 15, and it was in Philly, if I’m not mistaken. We came to a hotel, there were thousands of people at that hotel waiting there. And it’s like, you had to push, we weren’t even important and you had to push and squeeze your way through the crowd to get in and go to your room. And like really, you almost couldn’t leave your room, it was so crazy. And Taker just talked about how it was so cool that wrestlers were like rock stars at that stage, and they really were. And like, we were able to be part of that period, which was wild.”

On seeing the ECW guys after a Raw taping: “Something we have talked about some is that whenever we were extras for WWE, we were in Philly, there was a point where ECW invaded WWE. I don’t know if you guys remember this at all, but Sandman spit some beer in Savio Vega’s face. And we were backstage, and a lot of the locker room got really upset about it. And apparently, not many people knew this was happening, that they were working in concert. So we left there, and we actually ended up eating at Hooters. I don’t know why, but Hooters on Pins Landing. And whenever we’re at Hooters in Pins Landing, when we walk in we see Raven, Blue Meanie, Sandman wasted out of his mind, and a couple of other guys. And then someone recognized — maybe Raven. And he said, ‘Hey, were you guys backstage? I know you guys do some stuff with WWE.’ And he said, ‘What were the guys in the back, what were they acting like? Oh, what were they acting like? Tell me, tell me.’

“And we’re like, ‘I don’t know. It seemed like they were a couple of guys who were mad. Some guys were just sitting there, very stoic.’ And then Sandman came over and said, ‘Hey, are you guys any good? Do you have any tapes you can send me?’ He said, ‘Send me a tape. Here’s my address.’ And he couldn’t write it, Raven had to write it down. And then we got his address, and he actually says, ‘I’m serious. Send me a tape.’ And myself and my brother, we sent VHS tapes of me wrestling as Surge or High Voltage versus Willow the Wisp, Jeff with a mask on… because whenever we’d do indies, if we could record them, we would wrestle each other. We had ladder matches in here.”

On getting called by Sandman: “Sandman saw this tape and he watched it through — and this is going to be a shocker, but he’d been drinking this night. And Jeff and I, once again, we were still living at home in our basement. Our dad was upstairs, and we had a basement that we kind of converted to our deals. We’re both still young at this time, right? And at 3:30 in the morning, the phone rings, and our dad storms out of bed. He goes, ‘What the hell, who’s going here at 3:30 in the morning?’ And it was Sandman. And he said, ‘Yo, this is Sandman.’ He said, ‘I need to talk to Matt and Jeff.’ He said, ‘Listen, you son of a bitch, you better not call here again at 3:30 in the morning.’ And we said, ‘Who is it? Who is it?’ He said, ‘Sandman.’ Jeff said, ‘Let me talk to him. Let me talk to him.’

“And then we got on the phone and talked to him for a little bit. And then he invited us, we came to Philly, we did shows for him. He was going to put us on an international tour of the Middle East he was doing very soon. He also said he wanted to bring us into ECW and give us an opportunity there to work there. So we were this close to doing something for ECW, and maybe working for ECW, but then we signed with WWE just a few weeks later.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Extreme Life Of Matt Hardy with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.

Matt Hardy Shares How The Hardy Boyz Nearly Ended Up In ECW

Matt Hardy Shares How The Hardy Boyz Nearly Ended Up In ECW

Matt Hardy Shares How The Hardy Boyz Nearly Ended Up In ECW

Matt Hardy Shares How The Hardy Boyz Nearly Ended Up In ECW

Matt Hardy Shares How The Hardy Boyz Nearly Ended Up In ECW