Matt Hardy revealed he wished his AEW debut wasn’t as “Broken” Matt Hardy, due to the lack of fans in attendance.
The former ECW Champion debuted for AEW in March 2020, shortly after being released from the WWE.
This happened on the same episode of AEW Dynamite as Brodie Lee’s debut, although neither man appeared in front of a life crowd.
This was because the pandemic hit that week, with that episode being the first to occur behind close doors.
This put a dampener on the return of “Broken” Matt Hardy, who was appearing for the first time since his WWE exit (although he was known as “Woken” in the WWE).
It did not go over as expected, and outside of a highlight in the first Stadium Stampede match, Broken Matt Hardy was a total bust in AEW.
This was because the gimmick was entirely fan driven. Without the crowd behind him, it was just a cringey mess of Matt Hardy with funny hair and a funny accent.
Matt Hardy agreed, wishing he had debuted simply as Matt Hardy. He spoke with the Daily Mail, revealing that if he knew how long the pandemic was to last, he would have simply been his “Hardy Boyz” character.
Speaking with The Daily Mail, Matt Hardy said:
Looking back in hindsight, if I would have known there weren’t going to be any fans for a year and a half and if I knew there was going to be a pandemic, which obviously no one could have predicted that, I probably wouldn’t have started as Broken Matt Hardy.
I would have started just as a regular version of Matt Hardy. Because Broken Matt Hardy is such a fan-driven character, you know, just everything he does from the taunts to the people of hearing him say words crazy, whatever it may be. It definitely is driven and fuelled by fans being in the arena.
So that’s what I would probably have done different. I would just come in, like Matt Hardy baby face, one-half of the Hardy Boys as opposed to doing Broken Matt Hardy from the jump.’