After weeks and months of teases, Youtube videos and the apparent exorcism of a sentient being from the inside of a mid 40s professional wrestler; Matt Hardy made his debut in All Elite Wrestling last week on Dynamite.
This immediately began mass speculation as to who he should face off against in an AEW ring. And, due to the amount of time we all currently have inside right now, I thought I’d give my own thoughts on the subject as well!
This one is kinda cheating as their match is scheduled for tonight as I write this, has already been announced but still, Chris Jericho against ‘The Broken One’ is something we want to see.
When you go through the annuls of the WWE Network, you’ll find it surprisingly hard to find Matt Hardy and Chris Jericho sharing the same ring. With the exception of a few throwaway matches on Smackdown throughout the years and any interactions during a Royal Rumble, Le Champion hasn’t ever really competed against The Broken One. This contest will give us a fascinating insight into the past and we see what could have been almost a decade earlier.
And now to the comedy side of things! The genius of Matt Hardy focuses around a plethora of things whether that be intricate storytelling, bizarre out of the box thinking or just plain funny ideas, creativity clearly flows through his veins. That is evident in a completely different way in the form of Orange Cassidy.
The ‘Best Friends’…friend/manager has taken over the AEW world and is currently one of the highest merch sellers and over characters. Putting these two in the squared circle together would be incredible- regardless of if Cassidy trys or not. Let us have it please, Matt Hardy needs to experience some freshly squeezed juice.
When the rumours of Matt Hardy joining AEW began, everyone immediately went ‘Ah ok, he’s The Exalted One for the Dark Order, cool’. However, on the same episode, Hardy appeared, this was proven to be false.
The man formerly known as Luke Harper in WWE, Brodie Lee was revealed to be the man behind the mental torture of Christopher Daniels and the leader of the cult. Therefore, it makes complete sense for a match-up between these two. The heavy-hitting but terrifyingly fast style that Lee provides would allow the, slightly, older Hardy to be able to take it a bit easier and not have to carry the match.
Additionally, the storytelling of the Dark Order vs The Army of Deletion on Tony Khan’s budget is just a brilliant image.
Matt Hardy cares about the theatre of wrestling. He enjoys the intricate, artistic approach of the industry and likes long term, well thought out storytelling.
And who else thinks like that? The Best Bout Machine, Kenny Omega.
Both Omega and Hardy could produce absolute magic together. Despite his age and previous injury history, Hardy can definitely still go and paired with, in my opinion, the greatest professional wrestler in the industry today, something brilliant could come from it. It doesn’t just need to be a long term feud either. If you want to take your time and just have an initial singles match to test the waters, they’d smash it out of the, currently, empty arena park.
Take everything I said about the artistic license of Kenny Omega and multiply it by 100 when it comes to Darby Allin. There is absolutely no-one on the All Elite roster I want to see face off against Matt Hardy more than Allin.
He is the only man who can match, and eclipse, Hardy in terms of video production, crazy imagery and storytelling imagery. We’ve already seen glimpses of it with his feuds alongside Sammy Guevara, Chris Jericho and more but it would be turned all the way up to eleven alongside Hardy.
It will be interesting to see how much the ‘Hardy Compound’ will be used within the company but chucking Darby into that setting would create brilliance, I have no doubt.
If Tony Khan, The Elite and the other members of the creative team want to introduce Hardy right, pairing him with the man who just won’t die would start it off with the biggest bang possible.
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