Posted on 1/29/126 by Colin Vassallo
Matt and Jeff Hardy sat down with Chris Van Vliet in
Albuquerque, New Mexico to discuss their legendary careers
as individuals and as a tag team, retiring Team 3D at Bound
For Glory and if they have thought about winding down their
own careers, their most extreme moments, Jeff being attacked
with a screwdriver by Randy Orton, Matt suplexing Ric Flair
off a ladder, their epic WrestleMania 33 return, crazy
Swanton Bombs, Leon Slater’s Swanton 450 and more!
Jeff, how’s your neck doing?
Jeff: “It’s better. This past Monday and Tuesday, it felt
really good. Then we flew out here, and I fell asleep a
little funky on the plane. I remember jerking my head up one
time, and it hurt. So it was hurting a little more than it
did Monday and Tuesday. But overall, man, it’s feeling good.
It’s definitely better. So this has been a little over three
months now. I’ve been dealing with two bulging discs on the
left side of my neck, and this happened when we dropped the
titles at the NXT Halloween Havoc show. It was one of those
things, you couldn’t even tell, it looked completely fine. I
landed flat, but I was on the big guy’s shoulders. The one
guy jumped off the ladder, clotheslined me off. The idea was
for me to go through the table, but I kind of overshot the
table, and he just broke the table, and my head just hit the
mat, and it was a little whiplash like that. It felt
terrible. I mean, it definitely felt like a concussion, and
I was close to being knocked out, but that’s when it
happened. Two bulging discs on the left side of my neck, but
I’m feeling much better.”
When you talk about thinking like this might have been the
end with this injury, how much do you guys think about the
end of your career?
Jeff: “I try not to think about it, especially with seeing
the Cena retirement tour, naturally, because we’re the same
age. He’s a little older than me, but I’m 48 and I’m like,
oh man. AJ, same age, he’s talking about maybe retiring
soon. I mean, I think about it, but the way my career has
went over the years, the ups and the downs, I just hope I
can do it for as long as I can. I think that’s the way I’m
going to do it, because after this neck injury, I feel like
my performances are naturally going to get 1,000% better,
because I’m so excited about this whole AMC deal and being
in TNA and continuing to evolve. But yeah, I try not to let
the thought of the end enter my consciousness.”
Matt: “Wrestling Twitter has been trying to retire us for
years now, and they still do. They’re trying to book our
retirement matches nonstop. But we feel good. As long as we
feel good, we’re gonna keep going.”
There is so much history with you guys and Team 3D. What a
special moment to be in there with the Dudleys for their
final match. Were all of you guys crying in there?
Jeff: “I think we were.”
Matt: “It was definitely emotional. So I’ll tell you this,
I’ll be fully transparent. D-Von, we just wanted to get him
through this last match, we knew he was retiring, this was
it. We want him to go out on this great match with career
rivals. We had no idea they were going to both take their
boots off, and we definitely didn’t know they were going to
give them to us. Jeff had just asked at the end, ‘Hey, is
that a thing?’ I said it wasn’t, but I think it is now. He
[D-Von] said ‘What we’re going to do at the end to show you
the respect and say you guys have won this battle. Whoever
wins this is the greatest of all time. We have something
we’re going to do, but we don’t want to tell you, is that
fine?’ I said, that’s great. Let’s just do it in the ring.
Let’s get a very authentic, genuine reaction, and that’s
what that was. More than anything, we just wanted D-Von to
be okay in that match. We tried to protect him as much as we
could. He’d had some serious health issues over the years,
and we were going to bust our ass to work as hard as we
could, because those guys haven’t been working a lot. Bully
has been working here and there, doing some stuff. But we
wanted to bust our ass and we really wanted to tap into the
emotion behind the match. What was great, even in the
beginning, we had to start the match so the crowd would stop
chanting. So the crowd was so involved in it, and they were
so emotionally invested, and that’s what made it feel so
special.”
That spot at WrestleMania 22 with Ric Flair. When you suplex
him off the ladder is wild. They’re reiterating he’s 57, so
he specifically asked you to do that spot?
Matt: “Yeah, so they needed a spot. They wanted a spot where
Ric was going to say he was hurt and be carried out of the
match and he was going to come back in the end, and he said,
‘I have an idea. Matt, I trust you. I know you’re one of the
creators of this ladder match. Will you suplex me off?’ He
said, ‘I’ll be honest. You’re the only person I trust doing
this match.’ And he also told Edge that whenever they had
the match, he said, ‘You’re the only person I trust to have
this match with, because I know you and The Hardys created
this ladder match nonsense.’ And I said, ‘Sure, that’s
cool.’ I remember we talked about the spot, and we had a
rung Ric was gonna be on, then I was gonna suplex him off. I
remember we’d got to that rung as we were fighting, and I
said, ‘All right, you ready?’ He said, ‘No, higher, higher,
higher.’ I was like, Okay, we went up one more, and he took
that bump like a champ and got him over. He was safe and
sound. And he said it was great. He said it was an easy
bump. He would always do that. He would do the deal where he
would flip over the corner, run to the other side, coming
off. He said, ‘If I can do that every night, it shouldn’t be
that bad off the ladder.’ Afterwards, he said, ‘It was easy.
Thank you. Yeah, it was good. Thank you.’ He said, ‘You took
care of me, made sure I got over. I didn’t land on my head,
and that’s all I wanted. Thank you. You’re the only person
in this match I trust to do it with.'”