AEW announcer and Senior Advisor “Good Ole’ J.R.” Jim Ross took to an episode of his “Grilling Jr” podcast to talk about a number of topics including why the rivalry between former WWE stars Edge and Jeff Hardy back in 2009 worked so well.
Ross said, “These two guys had paid their dues, as we say — probably too much. But they looked at this as a great opportunity. Two guys who are primarily known as tag team wrestlers as a result of the TLC matches. So now you split them up a little bit, and you got Edge and Jeff Hardy who already had a relationship, so to speak, a rivalry. They knew how to work with each other. So I thought it was good, I had no issue whatsoever with that match closing the show. There might have been some talent who did, because of the entitlement thing. But I thought he was a good man.”
“It was what we needed to do. We needed to get some new blood in the main event slots to see how they were going to do. And I thought both those guys delivered famously… Two young guys who made their mark and tag team wrestling, finally getting a singles opportunity to close a pay-per-view for the title. You don’t need to say much more than that. And they took that as a challenge, and they went out there and had a hell of a match. I thought it was just outstanding. I thought these guys could have used a little bit more time if they needed it. But it was good, it was really good.”
On Jeff Hardy:
“All those guys like that were looking for opportunities. And we saw that Jeff Hardy was going to be a big star. The audience just gravitated to him for whatever other reason — and I’m not saying that in a negative way, they loved the guy. He excited them. He gave them something new and fresh. And during that time, I didn’t know that we had a better heel than Edge. He might have been the best we had. I don’t know who [else] would be. But he was great because he worked at it, he perfected it. And I just really had a lot of love for both those guys.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
