7 months ago
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AEW superstar Matt Hardy recently spoke on his “Extreme Life of Matt Hardy” podcast, discussing several topics. Among them were his free-agent status, AEW’s decision to air the CM Punk/Jack Perry footage, how the company can attract more fans, and more.
Below are some highlights from the podcast:
Hardy on his free agent status:
“Full disclosure. I am doing what I should be doing as a free agent, creating hype around myself. Yes, I have been speaking with AEW constantly. I have been speaking with WWE. I’ve been speaking with several people across several different platforms.”
Hardy continued, “So I think the next couple of weeks are going to be fun. The next few weeks are going to be fun. As I said before, I think we’re getting to the point where we’re going to be doing some pretty cool stuff coming up. So yeah, I am doing what I should be doing and my job as a brand, which I have to look at myself as a brand, a lot of my social media stuff is the Hardy brand. My job as a brand is to promote myself and to create buzz around myself and I feel like I do a pretty decent job with it whenever I am just able to kind of freelance and do whatever.”
Hardy on AEW’s decision to air the CM Punk/Jack Perry footage:
“I wasn’t crazy about the footage and how they how they utilized it. I mean, I get the intent, I guess, but I would have stayed away from it. If I was in charge of AEW and making decisions, I would leave CM Punk in the past where he was and I wouldn’t reference him at all going forward. CM Punk is not at AEW. He’s somewhere else. I would not reference him at all going forward and I would focus on AEW and who is currently at AEW.”
Hardy on how AEW can attract more fans:
“I think that you have to appeal to more casual fans. I mean, I understand your mindset where AEW is built on the context of having great matches and having five-star matches and bangers and whatever else since the place is very wrestling-heavy. If you love wrestling, where the best wrestle, you know, they’ve even used that as a catchphrase, and I’m okay with that, but I still also think there has to be people that are just casual wrestling fans that are trained in the way like, ‘Oh, well this guy’s a big star. I’d like to see him perform. I would like to see him wrestle. I’d like to see her wrestle. I’d like to see this. I’d like to see that.’ I feel like that would be beneficial. I feel like sometimes AEW plays and caters to too much of a niche audience sometimes and I think they just need to broaden who they play to sometimes.”
[h/t WrestlingNews.co for the transcription]
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