Matt Hardy

Matthew Moore Hardy is a professional wrestler best known for his time in WWE, where he began as part of the Hardy Boyz tag team with his Real Life brother Jeff. He also joined Jeff in TNA for the better part of 2011. He has won multiple championships both on his own and with his brother, including the revived ECW World Heavyweight Championship.

After spending several years as a jobber in the WWF, taking part in matches against Hunter Hearst Helmsley and The Ringmaster, Matt finally rose to prominence after forming a tag team with Jeff, known as the Hardy Boyz. They had a variety of managers in their early years, including Michael Hayes, Terri Runnels, and Gangrel (during which they were known as The New Brood and started their long-standing feud with Edge and Christian. They gained most success when managed by Matt's real life girlfriend Lita, known as Team Xtreme.

Although both were known for a high-flying style of wrestling, Matt was always known as the more calculated and restrained of the two, known more for his "Twist of Fate" finisher than for his dives.

Over the years, Matt and Jeff would split, feud against each other, or feud against other people.

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Matt Hardy provides examples of the following tropes:

• Alter Ego Acting: "Matt Hardy Brand" and "THE MATTHEW BRAND"
• Arch Enemy: Edge, for many reasons, both Kayfabe and Real Life.
  • Not as much in recent years. He wished Edge well after his retirement, stating that they have both started and ended as friends.
• Attention Whore: The entire thing of what seemed to be his life spiraling down and him planning to commit suicide. After tons of cryptic messages that gave the outright impression he was going to commit suicide. End result of it was him doing a work and just doing it to "test his fans" and advertise his "rebirth".
  • The fake suicide note caused a genuine panic, with many people actually calling the area police department and getting them to check on him. There was a massive backlash when it was revealed to be fake. In addition to angering fans, this stunt also upset his friends and his sister-in-law.
• Berserk Button: Don't you dare give him purple grapes; MATTHEW only eats green grapes.
• Breakup Breakout: At first, Matt was the Michaels during his Matt Hardy V1 gimmick, during Jeff's first run in TNA. Then the whole Matt/Lita/Edge love-triangle happened, Jeff re-signed with the WWE and became world champion, and Matt became the Jannety whilst still remaining successful. However, after Jeff left the WWE, Matt squandered in the lower card before they both wound up in TNA, where Jeff became the centerpiece of Immortal whilst Matt became a background player in the same stable.
  • At least until Jeff's drug problems got to the point where TNA decided he couldn't work and sent him home. Now Matt's suddenly become one of the main wrestlers of the group...
    • ...until Matt got put on suspension for chronic lateness and then fired after a DWI.
• Cain and Abel: With Jeff when feuding against each other.
• Cloudcuckoolander: He has two YouTube channels, one for "Matt Hardy", in which he acts weird, but is a typical vlog-style channel, and one for "MATTHEW" ("ALL CAPS!") where he speaks vague pseudo-philosophy, burns money, shows off his weapon collection, drinks beer, and eats grapes. Lots of grapes.
• Epic Fail: His promo upon returning to the WWE after the business with Edge and Lita. He had sympathy of the crowd, huge momentum and seemed to be in line for a major push, only to kill it dead within ten minutes. Wishing Edge would die in a car crash killed off a lot of the support he had and basically screwed any chance he had of reaching the main event in the WWE.
• Mr. Fanservice: Well, he is a Hardy...
• Finishing Move: Twist of Fate/Hate in WWE / TNA, Ice Pick in TNA.
• Heel: Arguably far more effective as one than Jeff.
• Incoming Ham: As Version 1 - It started with a web search for Matt Hardy, which then "loaded" the titantron before Matt made his way to the ring, with the screen formated to resemble the then-current look of Windows Media Player, whilst "Matt Facts" appeared on the left of the screen (Usually, these were useless bits of trivia).
• Large Ham: As Matt Hardy Version 1.
• Man Scorned: Infamously during 2005.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Matt is the Blue Oni to Jeff's Red.
• Red Baron: "Cold Blooded"
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: After his DWI arrest in August 2011, Hardy was released from TNA.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Grapes.
• Screw the Money, I have Grapes: In one MATTHEW video, he claims the million dollars or so he has earned in the past decade is worthless, save to buy grapes.
• Sibling Team: Guess who...
• Small Name, Big Ego: Claimed on Twitter that it was because of him that TNA saw an increase in their ratings following his debut in the company. Apparently, he thinks he's a bigger draw than Kurt Angle, who returned at the same time Matt made his debut.
• Worked Shoot / Real Life Writes the Plot: The whole Lita/Edge affair. Long story short, Lita and Edge were having an affair and Matt was fired after talking about it. Eventually he was re-hired, and the whole scandal was made into a storyline, albeit they made it look like a shoot.
  • The "MATTHEW" videos were a work to get himself fired from WWE, as he had wanted a release for a while, but some people took them seriously including Spoony.