Matt Hardy Says He’s Abandoning All of His Gimmicks: ‘It’s Time For Me to Be Matthew Hardy’

Matt Hardy has posted a new video to Youtube in which he says that it’s time to drop all of his gimmicks and be ‘Matthew Hardy.’ He noted that he is trying to do his part to bring people together in a time when there is a lot of division.

He said: “When I first made the decision to come to All Elite Wrestling, I was excited and I thought the sky’s the limit, no doubt. What I expected, when I first debuted as ‘Broken’ Matt Hardy, at AEW Wrestling, is every single night, every single Wednesday at Dynamite, a sold out arena across America. I thought there would be a thousand people screaming at the top of their lungs, ‘DELETE! DELETE! DELETE!’ But that isn’t what happened. What I didn’t expect is that Broken Matt would debut at the first-ever AEW empty arena event. That’s where I debuted. And Broken Matt never performed in front of AEW fans.

And that’s one of the coolest things about All Elite Wrestling is the passion of the fanbase. And for sure, I came in and I did Broken Matt…he’s such an interactive, fan-friendly performer-character-gimmick, whatever. I was like, ‘Man, this will be a hit. This will work. This is gonna be great. This is gonna be my best and greatest run yet.’ But that’s not what happened and that was frustrating. So I decided to change course as any good professional does. So I decided to do like a highlight reel. Let’s do the best of Matt Hardy. Let’s give you Matt Hardy’s best moments. Matt Hardy’s best personas. Let’s wrap it all up in one and do a Matt Hardy highlight reel. Kinda the opposite of what my brother’s being asked to do somewhere else.

So we do the best of Matt Hardy. And I’m helping out younger talent which is something I legitimately do in real life, on camera and off. Private Party, I really do mentor those guys. I started a storyline with Sammy Guevara but that doesn’t go too far because Sammy gets suspended. And that’s frustrating.

But I know I’m not the only one that is frustrated today. I’m sure most of…the majority of Americans are frustrated. It is a frustrating time in this country. I mean, we have so much division. It’s insane. It’s chaos. Democrats, Republicans, we’re in the midst of a killer pandemic that has killed over 140,000 Americans and both sides of the political parties are trying to weaponize it towards each other for their own gain. There’s so much racial injustice, social injustice, so many problems going on. So much division, I can’t stand it. It’s frustrating.

And so I decided to do my part to try and heal some of this division, trying to do what I can to put it back together. Trying to be a voice of reason. I’ve had a lot of life experiences. So maybe now it is time for me, on AEW programming to just be real and be someone I have never been on TV or on screen before and that’s me. Maybe it’s time for me to be Matthew Hardy. Maybe it’s time for me to just be me.”