WWE: Top 5 Matt Hardy Moments In Honor of His Retirement

4. The Matt Hardy/Lita/Edge Love-Triangle

I hesitated before naming this one of Matt’s top 5 moments. It’s difficult to consider the exploitation of a real-life relationship gone sour, and all that came with it, a highlight: the consequent hatred towards Edge (which he recovered from) and vilification of Lita (which left deeper scars), and Matt’s initial firing at WWE’s hands, who considered his use of social media to reveal the real-life betrayal sufficiently unprofessional enough that they could no longer employ him.

When WWE brought Matt back, ostensibly guided by fan demand, it was under a premise that must have been intensely difficult for all three participants: Matt’s re-employment came with the caveat that he, Edge, and Lita work through a storyline version of their real-life turmoil.

The whole thing was uncomfortable to watch at the time, and is perhaps worse with the benefit of hindsight – removed from the emotion that clouded my judgement  as a heartbroken Matt Hardy fan.

Yet it is undeniably an incredibly significant part of Matt’s tenure in WWE. His steel cage match against Edge at Unforgiven felt raw and real in a way that set it apart from much of what was happening in WWE at the time.

Each altercation was murky with ambiguity: it wasn’t truly possible to tell what was real and what was story, whether the punches were pulled or whether they left legitimate bruises.

Pre-reality era, there had never really been such an explicit conflict between undeniably compelling television drama and the uncomfortable sense of peering through the keyhole at someone’s private business.

It should never have happened, but it did, and for better or worse, it remains one of the most significant moments of Matt Hardy’s career – not least since it marks a nadir from which he would eventually make his triumphant return.