On a recent episode of his podcast, “The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy,” pro wrestling legend and TNA World Tag Team Champion Matt Hardy discussed various topics.
He emphasized that the true damage to TNA Wrestling occurred during the Hulk Hogan era, primarily due to excessive spending, rather than the infamous Victory Road 2011 incident. In that incident, Matt’s brother Jeff arrived visibly intoxicated and unfit to compete in his World Title match against Sting.
Hardy said, “I don’t think that moment put TNA on the wrong path as much as Hogan taking control and bringing in everybody else, and totally rebranding. That is what put TNA on the wrong path. This was a bad incident, no excuses for any of that. But it wasn’t what hurt the company. What hurt the company was Hogan taking control, all of the excessive money he was spending — he was spending money like he was Tony Khan — and rebranding what TNA was at that time. The TNA faithful, the audience that was looking for that alternative, that thought they had found this alternative, now they’re going, ‘Oh, we’re getting WWE-lite. That was the biggest thing that turned people away from TNA at that time.”
On the problems:
“They had that clip where the crowd was chanting, because the six-sided ring was very much an establishing point of what made TNA an alternative. I’ll never forget, even during that time when Hogan was there, the Nasty Boys are coming in, and here’s Bubba. So many excessive talents were there being paid probably big amounts of money that really weren’t contributing or making the product any better. They spent way too much money.”
You can check out the complete podcast below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
