Matt Hardy Reveals He Replaced Brodie Lee In AEW Feud With Hangman Page

It didn’t take long after debuting in AEW for Matt Hardy to shed his ‘Broken’ ways and revert to ‘Big Money Matt’, with the cash conscious Hardy feuding with Adam Page over their Q1 earnings.

The two would face-off at AEW Revolution 2021, with ‘Hangman’ coming out on top, but as revealed on The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy podcast, Brodie Lee was originally meant to feud with Page.

"Yes, the plan was originally to do Adam Page vs. Brodie Lee. That was going to be the program,” started Hardy. “Then, when we knew Brodie was sick, obviously I ended up being plugged in there. We'd been through the pandemic, as I've mentioned in the past, 'Broken' Matt Hardy, a very, very fan-driven character, and it was just time for me to pivot for sure. So I pivoted into doing 'Big Money' Matt. Then, I was going to end up ultimately taking Brodie's place in this program of working with Adam and then giving him a big win over a known star to keep moving on for the World Title."

Hardy and Brodie both debuted for AEW on the same night, during the ‘empty-arena’ period of the COVID-19 pandemic:

“It was an insane era of wrestling, having shows in front of no fans just feels wrong and as I’ve said in the past, it just doesn’t feel like pro wrestling,” continued Hardy. “It’s one of those things where the show must go on and now we’re just playing to the TV audience and we’re doing all that we could to entertain them and have them keep up with our story and build sympathy for this Adam Page character but it’s hard because you couldn’t get an instant barometer, you couldn’t get an instant gauge.”

Hardy and Page put on a great match at Revolution, and Hardy says he enjoys the match even more as time has gone by:

"I loved it. I feel like the further you get away from a match, if you're pretty happy with it, initially, the further you get away from it, you usually like it a little even more. One thing I want to add to this too, is that we also threw in on a BTE segment, which originally was going to be Brodie that sent the text from Hangman's phone to The Young Bucks, which kind of broke them up. But once again, I stepped into that role entirely and then I ended up being the guy revealed as the guy who sent him the text and took him away from The Young Bucks. Then that also gave me some great justification for breaking them up what I wanted to do get them to myself, whatever, and also helped me as a heel as well, because it was a real s***** act and people loved seeing those guys together. It played right into the story we were telling with Hangman as well."

H/T: Fightful