Matt Hardy Recalls Being Ribbed By Owen Hart Early in WWE Run

Matt Hardy recently looked back on his experiences with Owen Hart and recalled being the target of Hart’s famous ribs early in his own WWE career. The latest episode of The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy featured the AEW star talking about Owen and you can see a couple of highlights below, courtesy of Fightful:

On being ribbed by Owen: “We were very excited to wrestle Owen. Both Jeff and I were. We were hoping we would get him because he was always really kind to the extras, being a smaller guy. I felt like he had an advanced knowledge of the business and I felt like he always tried to give them something if he thought they were good, and that’s why we were always very excited to hopefully work with Owen, because we’re like, ‘Oh, man, he’s gonna give us a — we’re gonna shine just for a minute or two, for a moment…’

“We go backstage and he has a canvas like a canvas you would cover up stuff with if it’s gonna rain. He has this canvas laid out and it’s probably 16 by 16. It’s a square, right? He said, ‘Let’s pretend like this is the ring. I want to practice this idea. Say this is the ring and I grabbed you in a waist lock. Just get down on all fours…’ It’s concrete underneath this little canvas. So to get down on all fours. He said, ‘I want you to scramble real hard this way, and then when I stop you turn and go 90 degrees to your left, scramble real hard there, and then when I stop you, scramble hard 90 degrees again.’ I said, ‘Okay, we’ll do it.’ That’s cool. he wants to go over this and highlight me and give me a good spot.”

On realizing he was being ribbed: “He says, ‘That was really good. That was really good.’ He said, ‘Let’s try it again.’ I was like, ‘Damn, this is hurting my knees, man.’ He said, ‘Let’s try one more time. I think you’ve almost got it.’ Then, we go again. Boom, boom, boom. It’s like, oh, man, I got it. It was hurting my knees and hands, we were on the concrete. Then, he said, ‘Ah, let’s just go over a couple more times. I really want to make sure it’s good.’ We did it five times! On that fifth time, I said, like, ‘Are you fucking with me?’ He said, ‘Yes, thank you for saying it! Oh my God,’ and then he just died laughing. He just had like this sweetheart, little laugh, like a child. He literally just had me doing that over and over where he was just standing up above me and having me crawl like a maniac on the concrete. Until I acknowledged that he was ribbing me. So that was one of my first very personal interactions with Owen.”