TNA World Tag Team Champion and pro wrestling legend Matt Hardy discussed various topics on an episode of his podcast, The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy, including WWE’s competition with AEW.
Hardy said, “Well I mean, I was asked that question. And whenever I try and speak on here — and I feel like I have a pretty good track record here on the Extreme Life of Matt Hardy — I just try to be fair, I try to be honest. I try and be as transparent as possible. And Ariel had asked me, he’s like, ‘Why do you think the TNA-WWE partnership kind of came along?’ And I said, ‘Ah, it could be because AEW exists.’ And you know that’s specifically what I did say, and that that’s kind of the first thing that popped in my mind when it was all said and done. You know, AEW is obviously finding a lot of success. You have Tony Khan, his father, Shad Khan, which — you know, they have plenty of money, no doubt about it. And you know, they aren’t going to be going broke anytime soon.”
On WWE’s motivation:
“So you know, it’s a thing that, it felt like to me [that] WWE, more than anything else, was trying to build TNA up to some degree. You know, to try and, help make it a rival for AEW. I mean, that kind of feels like what part of this is about. And you know, do they want to hurt them? Maybe? I guess it’s a perspective. I definitely think they look at AEW as something that is a competition. And they want to make sure that they stay as the number one pro wrestling promotion in all of the world.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
