Matt Hardy knows wrestling fans have noticed the way he walks these days, but he says they’re blaming the wrong body part. Despite the frequent comments about his knees, Hardy says the real problem is his hips and lower back.
Speaking on The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy, Hardy explained just how much damage years of leg drops did to his body. One of the worst came at Unforgiven 2005, when he dropped from the top of a steel cage onto Edge and felt the effects for more than a month afterwards.
“It took me probably five to six weeks before I totally had the little kink out of my walk because it really did bang me.”
That bump also forced Hardy to think about what repeatedly landing on his backside was doing to him. During The Hardys’ hectic schedule, Matt would hit the leg drop while Jeff Hardy followed with his splash almost every night.
“Every night, I would do the leg drop and Jeff would do the splash. Leg drop and splash, leg drop and splash. It’s like your lower back and compacting the spine is so much harder than, like, your arms or knees catching.”
Eventually, Hardy realized something had to change if he wanted his career to last. That was when he began moving away from the leg drop and introduced another move into his arsenal.
“I think I’m going to tweak this up a little bit. I’m going to kind of try and, like, wean off these leg drops. And that’s when a whole elbow to the back of the neck was born.”
“It’s got to start working a little smarter here to try and get some longevity out of this career.”
Those years have still left their mark. Hardy says medical imaging has shown considerable scar tissue around his hips and lower back, while also revealing that his hips are anatomically wider than those of most men.
“There’s so much scar tissue. They’ve said even from the X-rays and pictures and stuff I’ve got of, like, my hips and my lower back, my hips are anatomically wider than most men’s are.”
“So, you know, there’s just so much scar tissue that built up around my hips and my lower back, especially from doing the leg drops.”
That brought Hardy to something fans have apparently gotten wrong about him for years. When people watch him move and assume his knees are shot, Hardy says they’re looking in the wrong place.
“That kind of hurts my flexibility a little bit too when people notice that, like, ‘Oh, he can’t move his knees.’ It’s not really my knees. It’s my hips more than anything else.”
The stiffness isn’t limited to wrestling either. Hardy said something as ordinary as spending too much time sitting in his Corvette can leave him needing to stretch once he gets out.
“Even the Corvette that I drive, like if I’m in it for a long time, like I get out, I kind of have to stretch and loosen up a little bit. So much scar tissue in my lower back, hips area.”
Hardy’s walk might have become an easy target for wrestling fans over the years, but according to him, his knees have been taking the blame for somebody else’s problem. After decades of leg drops and hard landings, it’s his hips and lower back that he says are really making him move the way he does.
Did you think Matt Hardy’s knees were responsible for the way he walks, or does his explanation about his hips and lower back make more sense? Let us know in the comments.
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