Matt Hardy On The Value Of Adding Tables To The Hardy Boyz vs. Edge & Christian vs. The Dudleys

On the latest episode of Extreme Life Of Matt Hardy, the AEW star talked about the memorable feud between The Hardy Boyz, Edge & Christian, and The Dudley Boyz, their TLC matches, and more. You can check out some highlights below:

On the importance of adding tables to the feud with Edge & Christian and The Dudleys: “I mean, it ended up being great because we had already been tied to ladders since winning the original tag team ladder match. And then those guys [The Dudleys] had been tied to tables for years because of their stuff in ECW. Which was very famous, very iconic already at that time because they did so many crazy table things, right? So we were very happy to do it, and add them to the ladders. What took a little while to figure out was just the chairs. Because like, Adam and Jay didn’t really have anything. We had to figure out some sort of weapon that they could have that would be able to counter the tables and the ladders. So yeah, I was super happy to have tables involved, because I knew that would give us a lot more — that would give us a much wider creative slate to create these unique bumps, especially with ladders. You can bump ladders to the tables…

So yeah, we were all in. And I mean that was, especially in those days — ’99 into 2000, 2001 — especially Jeff and I, speaking for us, we felt invincible. So we were super happy to do those matches. That was our forte. You were putting us in our greatest environment where you’d let us get out there and just cook, as the kids say… we would just go out there and we’d cook. Because we’d have all these ladders, we’d have these tables, and we have these chairs, where we can come up with all these interesting ways to use these inanimate objects.”

On the importance of Bubba helping come up with ideas for their matches: “He always came packed with ideas. He was always full of ideas. Very creative, had good ideas. I feel like a lot of times — Adam and Jay always contributed to what was going on. I feel like most people would have said then that Adam was probably the guy who called the majority of stuff, but it was Adam and Jay. And they both have brilliant minds. I don’t think there’s any secret; I’m not like divulging any new information there. But then when it came to the Dudleys and the Hardys, it was always Matt. A lot of times, it was like Matt, Bubba, Christian, and Edge, and we were kind of putting stuff together.

“D-Von would always be around, he would always be there, he’d be interactive. Jeff would just usually say like, ‘Well, I was just thinking like if I was trying to go for the belts, and someone moves the ladders, I’m hanging. Is there like a way like Edge would like to jump off something super and spare me? Can you guys get that in? All right, I’ll talk to you later. I’m gonna go play music.’ Or whatever, you know. That was like his mentality. We’d figure out that one big Jeff spot is going to be the big shot, and I mean, that worked.”

On whether Vince McMahon saw Bubba as a top guy: “I think he saw Bubba as a smart guy, that he probably had hopes that he might get there. You know, he probably wasn’t the body type that Vince was necessarily into. But I think he saw a lot of potential, because Bubba is a very savvy business guy and conducts his business in a very smart way.”

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.