Edge and Christian Love ‘Woken’ Matt Hardy Gimmick

During the latest edition of E & C’s Pod of Awesomeness (via Wrestling Inc), both Edge and Christian gave their thoughts on WWE’s ‘Woken’ Matt Hardy storyline. Here are highlights:

Christian’s thoughts on Woken Matt Hardy: “My favorite thing in the longest time: I love Woken Matt Hardy. I love it. It’s amazing. If we could just have three hours of him doing promos, it would be the best thing ever. The way he’s committed to this and the way he [has] sculpted and created this character and brought it to life, it’s pretty much f–king genius! Right, to come up with something like that?”

Edge on Matt reinventing himself: “It’s pretty ingenious to [say], ‘okay, I can’t do Broken. I’ll do Woken!’ He is woken from the isles of ecstasy, not the halls of Nostradamus and Aristotle and he’s Woken.”

Christian on playing crazy characters: “Here’s the beauty of a character like that: he can literally do anything and get away with it because you’re crazy and as long as you believe in what you’re saying no matter how out there it is, no matter how insane it sounds, no matter how corny it sounds, you can make it work because it just works. It just does. That’s the beauty of this type of character. If you could get it to that level that no matter what you do it’s going to work, then you’ve made it.”

Christian on Matt shining in the role: “It’s like a good classic cult movie, right? It takes a little time before you get it. Yeah, and then, you’re like, ‘oh, I get it!’ Yeah, but the fact that he [has] got to do it now on this stage, I mean, tells you… Even the crowd chant when he came back [to WWE], it’s a completely different dynamic than when he was with The Hardy Boyz. It’s something on the completely other end of the spectrum. And it’s hard when him and Jeff went single at any point in their career. And we went through it a little bit, but we somehow managed to get away from it. But it always there, the Edge and Christian [team] and the comparisons were always going to be there. It’s hard to picture those guys apart. And for whatever reason, Jeff had seemingly an easier time as far as singles connection than Matt did. But this is kind of the thing that Matt [has] been waiting for to be his thing, to be seen in that completely different entity as The Hardy Boyz and elevate himself and it’s cool. It’s cool to see.”

Edge on Matt’s mind for the professional wrestling business: “Think back to [Total Nonstop Deletion] and everybody’s like, ‘what the hell is that?’ and they didn’t get it. Matt’s thing has always been his brain and the things that he thinks of. The fact that he was a lifelong wrestling fan and all of those things. Jeff was too, but Jeff is just one of those intangible guys that we’ve talked about. You’re not going to be able to figure it out. You’re not going to be able to put your finger on it because it just is. And Matt just has a different way of finding out what his thing is. And I think the v. 1 character kind of brushed the surface of what this is. I’ve got to tell you, man, when I first saw that Total [Nonstop Deletion], I was like, ‘what is happening right now?’, but I dug it because I wanted to think that I was getting it. I was like, ‘they’re just going so far over the top here and they’re in on their own joke. No one else gets it yet.’ Now they all do.”