Matt And Jeff Hardy Nearly Worked For Competing Promotion Before WWE

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The late 1990s was an extremely competitive time in professional wrestling, with both WWE and WCW fighting for fans' attention and the best talent in the industry. Matt and Jeff Hardy would eventually become staples of the WWE tag team division, and they have gone on to have successful careers, but there was a point where they almost joined a rival promotion.

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During a special live edition of "The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy" podcast, Hardy recalled the night where ECW invaded WWE for the first time, which came at a time where Matt and his brother were still extras for the most part. After the event, they ended up running into Raven, The Blue Meanie, and The Sandman at a restaurant near the arena, to which a very drunk Sandman tried to recruit The Hardys to ECW. 

"He said, 'Hey, are you guys any good? You got any tapes?' He said, 'Send me a tape, here's my address,' and he couldn't write it. Raven had to write it down. We got his address and he actually said, 'I'm serious, send me a tape.'"

Hardy and his brother agreed to it, sending The Sandman tapes of them wrestling, leading to a phone call in the early hours of the morning a few days later. "He wanted to bring us into ECW and give us an opportunity to maybe work there. So we were this close to doing something for ECW and maybe working for ECW, but then we signed with WWE just a few weeks later."

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Please credit "The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.