Matt Hardy is all for wrestlers having creative freedom, but he thinks AEW occasionally takes that freedom a little too far. After spending years inside the company, Hardy says letting everyone “go wild” can leave the same ideas showing up over and over again.
While speaking on The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy podcast, Hardy was discussing Adam Copeland’s comments about enjoying the freedom he has in AEW. Hardy understands the appeal. He had plenty of it himself during his AEW run, and he was happy to support the company while he was there.
“You know, first and foremost, I was at AEW and I waved the flag. That’s what any good employee should do. So, I mean, I think that’s a big part of what Adam is doing there. But, you know, there is a lot of creative freedom in some ways with what you do at AEW.”
The problem, according to Hardy, is what happens when nobody pulls things back. Giving wrestlers room to create can produce something different, but it can also mean everyone starts reaching for similar ideas without realizing somebody else already has the same thing planned.
“And I think in some ways there’s a little too much. Some things need to be reeled back in because there’s oftentimes, you know, sometimes things get repetitive when it’s done too much, obviously.”
Hardy pointed specifically toward stipulations and bigger match scenarios. If something is going to be thrown into a match, he believes there needs to be a reason for it instead of simply letting everyone do whatever they want.
“And, as we were just talking about in the very beginning with stipulations, it needs to make sense to have these stipulations, to have these particular scenarios happen in certain matches or whatever else. And, you know, sometimes at AEW, they’re willing to let people go wild, which in some ways is good, but in some ways, too, they need to rein some stuff in.”
Hardy has seen a different approach since returning to TNA. He says the company will actually keep track of what other matches are doing so one match doesn’t break a table only for another table to show up again immediately afterwards.
“There are times where they just, like, will check between matches, like, ‘Okay, well, there’s a table being broken here, so we don’t want any tables in this match.’ Or, you know, ‘There’s somebody using the stairs here, so we don’t want any stairs in this match.’”
That’s something Hardy says AEW was trying to improve during his time there, because the repetition wasn’t just hypothetical. He remembers the same objects and ideas sometimes making their way into multiple matches on the same show.
“And I think TNA is really good about that. And, you know, that’s something that I think AEW, especially when I was there, they were working hard to improve upon because things were happening in multiple matches, you know, specific stuff like that—using a certain object or breaking a table or a chair or whatever else it may have been.”
For Hardy, that’s really where the line needs to be drawn. He isn’t asking AEW to take creative control away from its wrestlers; he just doesn’t want that freedom turning one cool idea into something viewers have already watched three times by the end of the night.
“But I do think it is important to try and lay out the show so it doesn’t seem like it’s repetitive, with the same thing happening over and over, and each match seems fresh into its own.”
AEW giving wrestlers room to experiment is part of what attracted plenty of talent to the company in the first place. Hardy just thinks somebody occasionally needs to look at the entire show and say enough is enough before another table gets pulled out.
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