How COVID forced AEW star Matt Hardy to reinvent himself (again)

Matt Hardy has been a relentlessly inventive player in the professional wrestling industry for decades. So when the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally altered life and wrestling as we knew it a year ago, Hardy did what he does best: he got creative.

Hardy had arrived in All Elite Wrestling last March as the Broken Matt Hardy persona he had presented incarnations of in Impact Wrestling, Ring of Honor and World Wrestling Entertainment (there known as Woken Matt Hardy) in recent years.

But Hardy found that his over-the-top, idiosyncratic character wasn't made for an era where wrestling shows were suddenly happening in empty venues.

“Broken Matt Hardy is a very audience-friendly character," Hardy said. "It needs a crowd, it needs an audience, and it just was not in the cards to be Broken Matt Hardy ... because his debut was in the first-ever empty arena era, pandemic-era show, the first empty arena show that AEW had.

"Broken Matt Hardy is ... very theatrical, and it doesn’t translate as well to the current AEW audience that sits at home and watches (on television) because I’ve realized that this is a much younger audience. It’s a much more sports-centric-type audience."

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Enter the latest version of Matt Hardy: Big Money Matt, a nefarious, high-rolling industry veteran. This is the iteration of Hardy that will be in competition at the "AEW Revolution" pay-per-view event Sunday night. He'll face off against "Hangman" Adam Page in a Big Money Match — with the winner taking home all of the loser's earnings for the first quarter of 2021.

“I tip my hat to (AEW president and CEO) Tony Khan. He allowed me to try kind of switching characters and see how people reacted to it," said the 46-year-old Hardy. "I think if we had been in arenas full of people it would have been different, but considering we’re now playing to the television audience, it was better for me to zone in and focus on one thing.

"And I think being Big Money Matt and being a heel, considering how I’m an older guy here and it’s such a younger demo(graphic), I think that’s the way for me to go. So I’m very happy with the groove that I’m currently in.”

"AEW Revolution" will happen in front of a masked, limited live crowd at Daily's Place in Jacksonville, Florida, Sunday at 8 EST/PST, available live on pay-per-view. (The event will also be simulcast in select Cinemark movie theaters.)

The "Revolution" bout against Page, arriving after a rivalry with Sammy Guevara and amid his assuming a managerial and mentoring role with tag team Private Party, coincides with one of Hardy's main reasons for being in AEW: to help build a new generation of talent.

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"My goal is to do as much as I can to legitimately help teach them and help them learn," Hardy said, "but also give them the rub from the two decades of television experience I have as well."

It's a role that suits the North Carolina native, who first rose to wrestling fame in the late-'90s as part of an extreme, daredevil tag team of innovative ring technicians alongside his brother, Jeff.

“I feel like as a babyface, I wanted to try and work with (the young talent) on the same level but I think physically, because I’m older, it’s kind of tough for me to do that," Hardy said. "I think I’m in a much better role where I can be the heel, the guy who isn’t afraid to get booed or the guy who doesn’t have to keep up with them and can work a different style that suits me better. Considering my age and the amount of physicality my body has been through over the years, I just feel like being in this role I’m at as the bad guy just works better."

Before COVID-19, Hardy had been booked to take part in the special "Blood and Guts" edition of the Wednesday night TNT series "AEW Dynamite," scheduled for March 25, 2020 at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.

Hardy made his AEW debut at an audience-free episode of "Dynamite" on March 18. With COVID vaccinations on the rise across the country, and the Newark date currently listed for Wednesday, Sept. 15, Hardy is ready to get back on the road.

“It’s made it so painfully obvious how important the in-arena audience is to our magic because they’re such a big part of it," Hardy said. "You watch a wrestling match at home, and hearing the 'oohs' and the 'ahs' and the cheers and the boos, and once you get into the comeback part of the match and the false finishes start rolling and you hear the (gasps), that’s a huge part of the magic and we’ve been doing without that for a year.

"So I’m very excited for that (to return) because not only does that make the bumps a lot easier to take for me, that also just makes the match so much more compelling. And I think not only the wrestlers are missing that, I think the audiences at home are missing that because that really is a huge part of the magic we create in pro wrestling.”

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: AEW Revolution: Matt Hardy on Big Money Match with Hangman Adam Page