During a recent edition of his “The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy” podcast, TNA veteran Matt Hardy named his male wrestlers of the year from AEW and WWE.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On the possibility of a Saturday morning kids’ wrestling show and the importance of enhancement matches: “I don’t think it’s out of the question. I think you have to have something now on the show that seems competitive, at least one or maybe two matches. I think it’s a great idea to have enhancement guys around to build guys up, especially if you’re trying to build up a talent to a certain point again. I mean, I think there are times where — one of the things I liked about AEW so much was when Bobby Lashley came in. And it was Cheeseburger and someone else, and Bobby Lashley just killed both of these guys. I thought that’s what he needed. I know even on here, I was a little critical of Shelton Benjamin’s debut, where he wrestled Lio Rush. Because I just thought it was — it was a great match, and it was good, but it’s not what Shelton needed right from the jump. You needed to make a statement with him and really say like, ‘This is Shelton Benjamin, just in case you don’t know him, and you’re meeting him for the first time, and he’s an absolute bada*s.’ You know, you really want to strike an exclamation point in the hearts of all the fans that are watching, especially for the first time.
“So I do think there are beneficial reasons for that. The guys who AEW caters to — and let’s talk about wrestling in general. The guys who AEW caters to are more focused, they would rather watch great matches than worry about how a character is built, or what the character or persona is, per se, I think. I mean, that’s what it seems like to me, especially from working there and being somewhere else. So, it’s a possibility that something like that could work, especially if it was for kids. And maybe if it’s the show was structured a certain way. If you started off with like two stars versus each other, maybe you ended with two stars versus each other and had two or three enhancement matches throughout.”
On the wrestlers of the year for men: “I’m going with a tie on this one. I’m going to say men’s wrestler: Cody Rhodes and Bryan Danielson. Co-wrestlers of the Year. Because Bryan Danielson had — he was so giving this year. And he was beat up during this year as he was working as well, you know, was going to need another neck surgery. And he gave his heart and soul in his body to AEW. And he went through and had this match where he lost to Jon Moxley and tried to boost Jon Moxley and tried to boost AEW as his run as champion, and just was so selfless in so many ways. And the things he does and helps behind the scenes, he is the guy that really stands out. And Cody, once again, it’s indisputable that he is just the guy right now, currently in pro wrestling. And he’s the guy that WWE is running off of, it’s running on Cody Fuel. So I am going to say, Cody and Bryan Danielson.”
