Matt Hardy Thinks Controversy With AEW Ring At Grand Slam: Australia Was Absurd

On the latest episode of Extreme Life Of Matt Hardy, the TNA star talked about the controversy with the smaller AEW ring being used at Grand Slam: Australia and more. You can check out some highlights below:

On his favorite joke about the ring size topic: “Okay, I did see this chatter on wrestling Twitter, wrestling X, whatever we call it nowadays. And the thing I was laughing about, I did see people were talking about that. It was a big issue. And I saw someone made a graph that said, ‘I can’t believe the ring was this big.’ And the image had two people fighting in it. They were like six feet tall, and the ring was like five by five. I don’t know if you saw that.”

On the actual controversy itself: “It’s absurd that this became a talking point, I think. I mean, that’s very typical. There’s like — when WWE, they have rings overseas that they’ll use, or whatever. I think they have WWE rings that have probably been shipped over there and just stay over there if they do international business. But with AEW going to Australia for the first time, like I totally get them getting someone else’s ring and using it. And whether it’s 16 feet or 18 feet or 20 feet — I mean, who cares? It’s crazy that it became a talking point.

“And it’s also — these people are so concerned about the inner workings of the business. Like, ‘Oh my god, the ring size. And is this what really hurt Buddy? Is this why he got hurt? Because of the ring?’ And especially if you said he didn’t — I didn’t see that post, if you said he did it in character. It’s just, they’ll take any molecule of information and turn it into a molehill, you know? And it’s crazy that that became such a debate. It just seemed like a silly conversation. Especially if it’s a standard ring. I mean, 16 is a pretty small, tight ring. 18, pretty standard ring I feel like nowadays. 20 you see sometimes. You know, the WWE rings were famously 20 forever. It’s very weird that the conversation took this turn, and that became a major talking point like, ‘Oh my god, they’re in a small ring. And how lazy of them to rent a ring and not bring a ring there.’ I think it was an absurd, preposterous talking point.”

On a smaller ring being easier to work in: “In all honesty, they’re easier to work in. It’s just quicker when you run the ropes back and forth. And I don’t think that’s a hard — it was much harder to try and get myself used to the six-sided ring that TNA had. That was a much tougher experience I thought, than a standard ring. Bbecause sometimes you have someone whipping you and like, if you’re kind of communicating, you’re working on the fly, you don’t really 100% know what you’re doing. Sometimes in the six-sided ring, you didn’t know where you were going specifically. And you didn’t know if you wanted to go to these ropes or the turnbuckle or the other turnbuckle. That would be a lot trickier because the ropes are so short, and they’re also angled so strangely.

“In a four-sided ring, in a square, it’s pretty easy to know where you’re going. If someone is trying to give you an Irish whip into the ropes, or if someone’s trying to give you an irish whip into the turnbuckle or whatever it may be.”

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.