Flashback Audio: Matt Hardy Talks Working With The Kliq, Success During The Attitude Era

Above is audio from an interview WrestlingINC.com conducted with Matt Hardy regarding a variety of topics, including his early years with WWF/WWE. We are posting interesting clips and stories from our interviews to our YouTube channel, so please take a moment to subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/WrestlingINC1.

Asked what it was like to come into WWF when the Kliq enjoyed a lot of influence backstage, Hardy expressed gratitude for the chance to work with members of the notorious group.

"There wasn't really anyone that gave us an overload of advice. But the one thing I will say, the first time me and Jeff went up, we both wrestled Scott Hall/Razor Ramon and he was really good to both of us. The first night, he wrestled Jeff and Jeff was only 16. He had to lie about his age and move his birthday back by two years and he kind of banged Jeff's knee on the pole when he was doing a certain move in the match. He checked on him the next day and the day after that. All the Kliq guys, especially Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were really cool to Jeff and I in the beginning. Jeff has his hair cut like Vanilla Ice, they actually called him Ice. They always knew the Hardy Boyz and the Ice guy. So, they were really cool to us overall? You hear a lot of horror stories about those guys, but Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and X-Pac were all really good to us early on."

Matt also talked about working during the heady days of WWF's Attitude Era and the experience of working in front of packed houses.

"Man, it's really amazing that we were able to come in during that time. Once again, looking back, 'Stone Cold' was white hot. The Rock was white hot. DX was a huge deal. For Jeff and I, once we got out on the road full time, we were wrestling Too Cool/Too Much every night as the opening match. For us, we almost became accustomed to it. Every night, we were in a building that was sold out with 20,000 people. That was pretty amazing, pretty special. I think we were almost spoiled a little bit because in 2001-2002 when the business slowed down a little bit and the big, hot Attitude cycle ended and the shows weren't sold out anymore, we were like, 'Oh, my God. What is this? We've never seen this before. This is new to us.' So, we were really lucky and really gifted to be there."

You can read much more from the original interview here.

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