Matt Hardy

[Jimmy Redman]

Matt vs Gregory Helms - No Mercy 2006

Matt vs Mr Kennedy - Smackdown 4th May 2007

Matt vs Finlay - Smackdown 22nd June 2007

Matt vs MVP - Smackdown 6th July 2007

Matt vs MVP - GAB 2007

Matt vs Shelton Benjamin - GAB 2008

Matt vs Finlay vs Miz vs Morrison - ECW 22nd July 2008

Matt vs Mark Henry - ECW 19th August 2008

Matt vs Evan Bourne - Cyber Sunday 2008

Matt vs Finlay - ECW 11th Nov 2008

Matt vs Shelton Benjamin - Smackdown 14th Nov 2008

Matt vs Edge - Smackdown 19th Dec 2008

Matt vs Mark Henry - ECW 6th Jan 2009

Matt vs Jack Swagger - Royal Rumble 2009

Matt vs Drew Mac - Smackdown 25th June 2010

 

Most of this is off the top of my head and stuff I haven't revisited since it happened. The ones in bold are the very best matches, but it's all worth watching and he was really so very consistent from that entire period between the MVP and Swagger feuds, you could basically watch any TV match of his from 2007-08.

[goc]

I thought pretty much the whole feud with Drew Mac was really good. That was during the "LOL Fatt Hardy" period when he was posting stupid shit online so it didn't get as much praise as it should have.

 

I also LOVED the MVP feud and it really sucked that Hardy got injured when he did and it took all the steam out of the feud.

[Parties]

He benefits from having a lot of good TV singles in the last 10 years, albeit midcard Smackdown stuff that people tend to forget. He made MVP look like an awesome worker. Held his own with Finlay. Had a very good match with Flair. The McIntyre stuff is very underrated. I'd even say I like his singles work more than the Hardys tags now. Haven't seen any OMEGA or Matt V1 stuff in a long time. I wouldn't vote for him, but he absolutely deserves consideration.

[Jimmy Redman]

Matt (D) mentioning him as being on his bubble made me come here and realise I hadn't said my piece on Matt (Hardy) yet.

 

With Matt it's definitely a case of great talent plus great output. I've already written a laundry list from late 00s TV, so just scroll up for that, although I might add to it to make a complete career rec list if I feel like it by the end of this post. He's just a ridiculously good, consistent TV worker. His peak was 2007-08 roughly, but really you can basically throw a dart at any match he had on TV from late 2005 to his 2010 release, and chances are it will be good at a bare minimum. He almost never has bad or disappointing matches. The only matches of his I can think of as being truly disappointing are the ones vs Jeff, which for obvious reasons just didn't work, despite their efforts.

 

More than his consistency, is his ability as a TV worker to bring something...I feel like transcendent is too strong a word, but maybe resonant? Special? He has a knack of bringing that out of people. Even a random SD midcard match, or an ECW main event or something seems important, mainly due to the way Matt would work it, selling and selling and showing aggression and timing his spots right and more selling that raised the stakes and made you feel like you were watching...something.

 

He and Ken Kennedy had a long match on SD in 2007, and that sounds ordinary on paper, but they went out there and beat the utter shit out of each other and made it into this great war. He and MVP began a midcard US Title feud on SD in mid 2007, and it sounds ordinary on paper, but their matches together were really great, really physical, wrestling contests, and during their whole feud they always made the title seem so important and like they were building an epic rivalry. Whenever he was the US or ECW Champion, he would have these title defenses and make everyone from Mark Henry to Evan Bourne seem like a real, legit challenger, and that holding onto the title was super important. I don't know how to fully express it, but it's like...the opposite of going through the motions, the opposite of the "here's where I hit my spots" hokeyness that modern WWE can fall into. Matt always managed to convey that he was in a wrestling match, fighting for his life, or his title, or his pride at least.

 

He has the career matches of a few people - namely Kennedy, MVP and Hurricane I can think of - plus arguably Edge's best singles match. The Kane match at SS 2004 might be one of Kane's best singles matches too.

 

If you care about range then he showed he has the range to play heel in 2003 with the Mattitude run, which was entertaining as hell and was a complete 180 from the babyface blowjob tag team worker he had been up until that point. The big Rey match in San Diego in June 2003 is great. I kind of want to go back and see what else is there from that cruiser run.

 

This is all just as a singles, by the way, and not even getting into his amazing tag team work. The Hardyz argument is self-evident at this point, except to say that it's worth noting that Matt was the brains of the outfit and contributed a lot of the structure and traditional grounding of their matches, and also did his share of crazy offense, big bumps and Morton selling. He's great in gimmick matches, ladder matches and always comes up with creative spots, as well as trying to tie those spots together and, like in regular Hardyz matches, trying to keep the feet of the match on the ground, so to speak. Obviously mileage varies here on ladder matches and shit, but in modern WWE the ability to have exciting and compelling clusterfucks with furniture is a big plus, and he has one of the most impressive resumes of them.

 

He has a lot of attributes as an individual that I think don't get discussed enough. For one thing, he has wicked punches. You all appreciate a good punch, and Matt has one of the best punches of the modern era. Watch the Kennedy match for Exhibit A. He's not a guy that you look at and on the surface think "man, that Matt Hardy really lays his shit in!" but if you watch him, he really does lay his shit in.

 

He's an amazing seller. One of the best physical sellers I've seen, in the sense that he can convey how a move, or a strike, or a series of them can damage and impair him in a specific way, on a level above simple "argh I'm dying" selling. It's more than just being able to sell the leg when it gets worked over, I'm more thinking of when it's not an overt "work the leg" match, just a match in general. If he takes a tonne of shit on his back over the course of a match, he shows you that his back is hurting, he's hunched and clutching his ribs when he's trying to come back. If he takes a tonne of blows to the face or head, he shows you that he's groggy or his head is pounding or his nose might be broken. He really takes the time to feel the moves, thinking about where they impact on the body and selling that effect in a realistic way.

 

And then when it IS a body part match, the same rings true, only the selling is amplified. Watch him vs MVP at GAB 2007. The story of the match is Matt coming in with a pre-existing concussion, and when he gets a head knock in the match he's clearly been concussed again. He sells this phenomenally well. You see it in every second of the match from that point, the fact that he's been knocked for a loop, that he's unsteady on his feet (slipping on the top rope at one point), that there are 9 different MVPs in his vision and he's trying to figure out which is the real one, that every boot or punch to his head feels like a fucking sledgehammer. And he's always fighting through this, trying to just will his way through it, because this is his big chance at the US Title on PPV (remember the part about him making everything seem super important?) but he's clearly being dragged down by this head injury, like an anchor wrapped around his ankles.

 

He's an amazing seller.

 

He also has an impeccable sense of timing, knowing how long to get shine, when to get his hope spots in, and when to come back, and his comeback is great and always pops the crowd. He has never won a match with the Side Effect in a 20+ year career, but every time he hits that shit people go nuts for the nearfall. He always knows EXACTLY when to hit it.

 

I'll be going super high on him, maybe higher than anyone else actually. I'm not sure I'd have 10 modern WWE type guys over him.

[goc]

Matt (D) mentioning him as being on his bubble made me come here and realise I hadn't said my piece on Matt (Hardy) yet.

It feels odd that someone could be thinking of rating Christian very highly but have Matt Hardy on the bubble. They feel very lateral to me as far as their careers and abilities. If I was doing a singles ballot I'd probably have Matt Hardy over Christian to be honest.

[Matt D]

It wasn't the literal bubble. It was the list of people who I couldn't rate without seeing more footage that I wanted to work out by the deadline.

[bradhindsight]

He made my list before I saw Jimmy's post, but that's a heckuva write-up.

[Matt D]

I'm actively watching Matt matches right now. I am more or less out of words for now but I will have something to say about the swagger title change later.

[goc]

Make sure to watch the Unforgiven 2005 Cage match with Edge.

[Grimmas]

 

Matt (D) mentioning him as being on his bubble made me come here and realise I hadn't said my piece on Matt (Hardy) yet.

It feels odd that someone could be thinking of rating Christian very highly but have Matt Hardy on the bubble. They feel very lateral to me as far as their careers and abilities. If I was doing a singles ballot I'd probably have Matt Hardy over Christian to be honest.

 

I have Christian comfortably over Hardy. I think he is a much better babyface work. Really his ECW run is all-time great as a face.

[Matt D]

My big takeaways so far are 1.) That Billy Gunn was a bump freak in 2001. 2.) That I really want to see the Koslov and Mark Henry matches at the end of 09 into 09 to see if Matt worked the same exact "arm being targeted" story in all four which would either be awesome or terrible (not sure which) and 3.) that while I really liked the Swagger match, the finish drove me absolutely nuts.