Matt Hardy believes that there are plenty of WWE fans who feel burnt by the company due to waiting for things to play out.
On the latest episode of The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy, Matt, co-host Jon Alba (and guest star Christian Cage) looked back on the triangle ladder match at WrestleMania 2000. During the episode, Hardy spoke about the frustration within WWE at times with the “let it play out” mentality and how despite great crowd reactions, the company would continually try to reel popular acts back in that they didn’t want to be over at the time.
“They just said, trust us, let it play out. I know that’s the famous statement now on the internet; let it play out,” Matt Hardy said. “It’s just one of those things that would become very frustrating, especially when you get to go out, and you get to do you, and you make this magic happen. You’re getting these insane crowd reactions, and then you kind of get reeled back, and then you get very frustrated. Especially if they don’t portray you in the way the crowd wants to see you portrayed as, and that’s where the tide was starting to turn a little bit.
“And people were really starting to understand the business because, in the Attitude Era, we kind of like gave everyone a peek behind the curtain, and now the internet is starting to come into prevalence and whatnot. So they’re starting to read stuff, and they’re starting to pick up more on like dirt sheets, slash internet wrestling sites, and whatnot. So they’re learning a lot more about the behind-the-scenes stuff. So I’m sure that makes them question of why are these guys getting beat all the time? They’re really over. But it was what it was, and we were all young guys, and we were just gonna go out and do our job to the best of our ability and make the most out of every scenario we had.”
“Let it play out” has been used in recent months for certain storylines in pro wrestling but as Hardy explains, the phrase has been used without a payoff a bit too much, and it has in turn led to losing the fans’ trust. Matt Hardy went on to say he believes that WWE has burnt their trust with their fans due to them waiting for things to play out too many times, only for nothing to happen.
“I feel like with WWE now, if you hear that expression of like let it play out, they’ve kind of burnt their trust with their consumers, with their fans,” Matt Hardy said. “I just don’t think people trust them anymore because there’s been so many times that people were very patient, and they waited for it to play out, but it just never did. So I think they just kind of lost trust with wrestling fans when it comes to that. It’s become like a meme now, right? People say it when they know it’s gonna be bad. You know, don’t worry, just let it play out. Hahaha! It really does become a meme.”
When asked if anyone in WWE ever specifically asked him to let things play out, Hardy said they hadn’t, but he’s been told similar things during his time there.
“No, I haven’t,” Matt Hardy said. “I’ve probably been told, well, trust me, think about the big picture. We got a big story here. This is just one small piece of the puzzle. I’ve never heard that exact phrase. No one has tried to sell me on that before.”
What do you make of Matt Hardy’s comments? Do you believe that WWE has burnt their audience with the “let it play out” mentality? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy with a link back to this article for the transcription.
