Though their paths to pro wrestling remain quite different, the moments when Matt Hardy and Matt Cardona realized they “made it” bear quite a resemblance.
During a recent episode of The Extreme Life Of Matt Hardy, the two talents began a discussion on action figures. Cardona, an evident connoisseur in collectibles, revealed his favorite Matt Hardy figure was actually the first ever to be produced of Hardy, and his brother, Jeff. “It’s a Titantron two-pack double slam where it’s just the Matt and Jeff with the red, Brood-style tight shirts whatever you want to call it,” Cardona described. “That’s a classic one.”
Hardy recalled feeling excited after getting virtually scanned for the figure, but admitted the turnaround time took a while. In the end, though, the wait was worth it. “When you get an official action figure from a WWE or a global company, like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve made it,'” Hardy said. “That’s affirmation that you really have succeeded and you’ve made it in some capacity. That was a huge deal for myself and Jeff, and we’re like, ‘Oh my God, we got an action figure.’ It’s crazy. It blows me away. We ended up getting so many more following that.”
Upon a visit to Hardy’s house one time, Cardona recalled seeing a huge display of figures. “This must have been like 2007 to 2008, you had a little after-party at your house after one of the local WWE shows, and we went to your house. We went in your basement. I saw all of your action figures on display. I was like, ‘This is the coolest f***ing thing ever.’ I’m like, If I ever become as big as Matt Hardy, I’m gonna have – I never became that big – but I’m gonna have all my figures on display because like you said, it’s something to be proud of. If you were a fan growing up, you collected the figures to play with them or at least knew what they were exactly.”
“To have a figure definitely signifies that you made it,” Cardona said. Besides action figures, Cardona and Hardy agreed there were two other indicators that they had succeeded in professional wrestling.
”For me, it was things like a t-shirt, video game, the figure [at] WrestleMania. Those three, video game, t-shirt, figure,” Cardona explained.
Matt Hardy echoed similar sentiments. “Same here,” he said. “When we got an official t-shirt, ‘Oh, my God, we’ve made it.’ We got official action figures. ‘Oh, my God, we’ve made it.’ We’re in a video game. Oh, my god, people can play and be us? We’ve made it. Those are my three as well.”
