Matt Hardy Explains His Strategy During His Storyline With The Firm

On a recent episode of his podcast, AEW’s Matt Hardy shared some details on how he worked the situation with Ethan Page and The Firm (via Fightful). His objective has been to remove himself and the members of Private Party from the stable’s control, and Hardy shared how he was able to manipulate Page in order to lay the groundwork. You can read a few highlights from Hardy and listen to the full podcast episode below.

On how he played against Page during the arc: “Let’s get it straight, he was never my best friend. So once I tried to save Private Party, and I ended up getting involved in their business, I ended up having my contract also under control by The Firm. They made my life living hell, and it wasn’t a huge deal to me because I was obviously gonna be defiant, I was going to fight him every step of the way. But then once he started taking advantage of my kids, of Private Party, of Zay and Quen, it was a whole different level. So then I took a step back and I figured I had to do something to find a way to get out of this. So I figured, he was enough of a Matt Hardy fan… a bit of a Matt Hardy mark, that I could fool him, that I could sway him into thinking we were best friends. I even got a bunch of those stupid shirts like he wears. I would wear them and we would dress similar. I had some from back in the Hardy Boyz days. Stokely, on the other hand, those were the two toughest points. Stokely, I knew I couldn’t ever win him over. So that’s why I came up with this whole plan with HOOK. He wanted to have me wrestle against HOOK. Okay, sure. Then I told Isiah, ‘Dude, I promise, I’ll get us out of this. I got a plan.’ It was the first time I was really nice to Ethan. He was like, ‘What?’ He said, ‘You dead-ass?’ I said, ‘Yes, I am dead-ass. I have a plan, my man.'”

On how it all came together for Hardy in the end: “Once I got [Stokely] out of the equation, I had Ethan wrapped around my finger. Not a big problem after that. As you can see, if you look back through the last few weeks in the chain of events, it really all makes sense in the big scheme of things.”