Matt Hardy knows that you can actually teach an old dog new tricks.
The most recent episode of his new podcast, The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy, saw Matt and co-host Jon Alba discussing the career of current AEW World Champion Adam ‘Hangman’ Page. Hardy was asked what he learned from his opponent, and he explained how Page taught him how to think differently when it comes to structuring matches.
“I feel like a lot of the guys in AEW, including Hangman Page helped me think in a different format in the way that wrestling works in a different way now. It’s a new formula, it’s a new, more modern formula, especially with the way you work a story. I think whenever we put together that match, Adam was also very smart with the way we structured it, we didn’t do a ton of things that were like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom because I feel like I excel more without being out in that scenario, especially this day and age, especially being older and having more mileage on my body or whatever but I thought the match was constructed very, very wise, I thought it was really good. It was storytelling heavy but also there was a ton of action in it but also a lot of crisp, exciting moves as well. So, yeah, I would say Adam has taught me to think a little differently when it comes to structuring matches and almost the way to interact with characters and angles.”
Hardy was then asked by a fan to name his top three cowboys in professional wrestling history, to which he obliged.
“I would say you got to put Stan Hansen in there. For an overall quality worker of a cowboy, Hangman Page is undeniable, you gotta stick him in there. Right now, he’s the present and he’s the future as the world champion of AEW. For number three, there’s Bob Orton, there’s JBL, I was thinking about both of those but I’m going to go with Cowboy Bob Orton, mainly because he ran that cast gimmick for the longest time, so he was a true heel.”
Hardy also spoke about the original plans for Hangman’s feud with Brodie Lee and how he stepped in as an opponent; read more about laying the groundwork for his feud with Hangman at this link.
