Matt Hardy Thinks Dixie Carter Skipped Dark Side Of The Ring Because It Was A Lose-Lose

On the latest episode of Extreme Life Of Matt Hardy, the TNA star talked about the portrayal of Dixie Carter the Dark Side of the Ring episode, defending his own dealings with her while critiquing the infamous locker room speech. The speech aired on TNA Impact and saw Carter telling the clearly unhappy TNA roster to support her or find a new place to work. You can check out his comments below:

On the Portrayal of Carter:

“They definitely decided to make Dixie the villain. It was interesting, and the more I think about it, there was a lot of hubris in that [speech] — like, ‘Hey, I’m calling the shots here, and if I make a decision, I need you to have my back.’ It makes me wonder: was she fed that by Hulk or by Eric? Like, ‘Go out and rally the troops.’ Who knows? They’re both sharks, right? They’re survivalists, they’ve been in the industry so long. Dixie was just kind of learning on the job, no doubt. She was like Carlos Silva — like, ‘These wrestling people online hate me, what’s going on?’ She dove into the deep end and wasn’t exactly sure how to swim in the pro wrestling industry.”

On His Experience With Carter:

“All of my interactions with her have been good. She’s been fair with me, she’s been cool, she’s been supportive of myself and my family and kids. But that moment where she sat down, that was not the best call, because that was not great for morale. People were probably like, what the fuck? Everyone wants input. I think if you run a professional wrestling company, it’s so important to have input on what you’re doing. You don’t want to be told, ‘Hey, this is what you’re doing, shut the fuck up and go do it. You don’t get any input, this is my company, I own it.’ I don’t think anybody wants to hear, ‘If I make a decision, you stand behind me, you just do what I say.’ It came off badly, and it probably didn’t do her any favors as far as winning people’s alliance and their loyalty.”

On Why She Skipped Being Part Of It:

“That’s interesting. There’s a part of me that thinks she would want to be in there to defend herself — unless she thought they were still going to put her in the villain role, and they were going to have people villainize her, and she was still going to come off looking bad. And maybe she just thought it was a lose-lose. At the end of the day, I feel like probably that’s what it is. She probably guessed she was going to be slated into ‘The Dark Side of Dixie Carter,’ right? She was going to be the one villainized in this, the one that got the majority of the blame, the one that was going to be looked at as the bad guy in this episode. Maybe that’s just why she didn’t want to have any part of it. Because if she would have been in it and still been portrayed as the bad guy, it wouldn’t have done her any favors.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.