Pro wrestling legend and former TNA World Tag Team Champion Matt Hardy recently discussed a range of topics on his podcast, “The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy.”
One significant point he addressed was the relationship between former WWE Chairman Vince McMahon and WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross. Ross confirmed that McMahon harbored animosity toward him and suggested that Vince seemed to take pleasure in making others uncomfortable.
Hardy said, “I felt Vince had a thing for like, putting people in positions which made them feel uncomfortable. And he kind of got off on that. In all honesty, that was like one of his things. And he — I felt like he did that with JR quite a bit. You know, that became a regular, common thing there. There were certain people — I felt like, if you ever showed signs of weakness or like, ‘No, I don’t want to do that.’ Or like being uncomfortable, like if you were outright uncomfortable with it, then he would push it even harder. Because I know there’s some people who did get that. I feel like anytime he put us in positions where — and I feel like sometimes he said like, ‘If you don’t go into areas or positions where you feel uncomfortable, you will never grow.’ And in some ways, that is true. But in some ways too, I think he was abusive with it as well. And JR probably was one of the guys he was more abusive with in many ways. There was like this real weird rivalry between them in some ways.”
On Todd Grisham’s recent comments about Vince:
“I saw bits and pieces of it. And it was wild. Like, just some of the things — Vince was a menace, right? Whenever he was on headphones, I know. Because you would say something that triggered him or he was in a bad mood. You just never knew what Vince you were going to get. You never know which Vince you were going to talk to that woke up on either the right side of the bed or the wrong side of the bed. You know, it was always very much like that. I did see some of those comments. One thing I can say, you were talking about JR and the roster, Jeff and I were definitely JR guys. And I’ll say this too, Jim Cornette early on pushed real hard for us to get hired. He said, ‘These guys have potential, they’re really good.’ I mean, that’s why he brought us the Smoky Mountain. I saw Mosh just shared a clip when we wrestled those guys for the first time. And it was cool. We did some stuff for Smoky Mountain, and Jim really was a big advocate for us, and he told us — he introduced us to JR. And we started building a relationship with JR as we were extras, we started getting dark matches. I’ll never forget, I wrestled Jason Arn a couple of times in dark matches. Jeff and I had some tag dark matches. And I was like, ‘Wow, they really are looking at us more than just putting us on TV just to get beat.’ And even some of the times we were on TV, they gave us longer matches. They extended our time, which was cool, and we would get to do some stuff. But JR, at the end of the day, is the one who absolutely made the call and pushed and decided to hire myself and Jeff. He also is the one who hired Edge and Christian. So that whole Edge, Christian, Hardys legacy, which is huge, that was all a JR call.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
