WWE: Matt Hardy is Heading Home

Longevity at the top of any industry is tough. However, you occasionally get an exception to that. For the last 26 years, Matt Hardy has been at the top of every wrestling promotion he has been involved with. Over those 26 years, he has been a part of the WWE, TNA, ROH, and various independent promotions. He has done very well for himself. I bring him up today for one main reason. Hardy announced in the early hours of Sunday that he is retiring from in-ring action.

It’s been known for some time that he was going to be walking away from the wrestling industry. However, until today, nothing was confirmed. He got his start in the WWF in 1994. While he got his start in 1994, he wouldn’t sign his full-time contract until 1998. As the Monday Night Wars were peaking, the WWE would end up signing both Matt and Jeff Hardy to deals.

Not even a year into the company, the Hardy Boyz would be put into a feud with Edge and Christian. Throughout their initial run with the company, the Hardy Boyz, Edge and Christian, and the Dudleys would essentially feud for the tag titles. It would be these three teams that would introduce the concept of a TLC match. If you look in the history books or talk to die-hard wrestling fans, many of them would say that the matches those three teams had were some of the best matches they had ever seen.

MATT HARDY: POST WWE

After Matt and Jeff both left the WWE, they would end up going through various promotions. One of them happened to be TNA. While they were in TNA, they changed stuff up a bit and begun a gimmick as Broken Matt Hardy and Brother Nero. This would become one of the most over gimmicks being presented in any sort of promotion. They would end up winning the TNA tag titles on two different occasions. Broken Matt Hardy got the word “Delete” over with the TNA fans. There are few people within this industry who can get over something simple like the word Delete.

After they didn’t re-sign with TNA, they would end up going on this crusade to win every tag team belt in every promotion. This would lead them to appear in ROH. We would end up seeing Matt Hardy appear on the jumbo Tron after the Young Bucks and the Briscoes had their match. This would lead to the Hardy Boyz, and the Young Bucks have a match at Supercard of Honor. The Hardys would end up gaining the ROH belts only to drop them back to the Bucks a few weeks later.

WELCOME HOME

They would then make their long-awaited return to the WWE in the Raw tag team title match at WrestleMania 33. Indeed, they would end up winning the belts. Throughout Matt’s professional wrestling career, he has held the WWF/World Tag Team belts six times, WWE/Raw Tag team belts three times, ROH World Tag Team belt one time, WCW tag team belt one time (during the invasion angle), and has held the TNA tag belts twice.

As a singles wrestler, he has held numerous belts including the TNA World Heavyweight title twice and the ECW belt once (during the reboot). As his brother Jeff Hardy is set to face Randy Orton at Hell in a Cell, it will be interesting to see if Jeff will soon join his brother.

Here is the video where he made the announcement: