Matt Hardy Recalls Story Of Match Against Rey Mysterio For Cruiserweight Championship At WrestleMania XIX

During the latest episode of The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy, Hardy spoke about his match against Rey Mysterio at WrestleMania XIX back in 2003.

“We had built up some momentum from the WrestleMania match where we had opened up the show and we had once again, maybe the story of my life, the story of being a pro wrestler, and the story of my career in the WWE, we lost a lot of time right before we went out there. So we burned through a lot of that match as well but we were still happy with it, It was a good pace setter of WrestleMania as well and I know we had specifically waited until Anaheim [to switch the title to Rey because] it was the closest location to Rey Mysterio’s hometown, almost against WWE policy, we were going to put over the local guy huge and it was cool because his family was there."

"I was originally going to go into a program with Edge but there were some political forces — WCW had come on board, and I don’t think they were in my corner. I got pushed out of this and Edge ended up working with A-Train. Adam, at that time, was pushing to work with me and elevate me as a singles as well. Obviously, we had been friends off of our past rivalries and always working together. So, that was out the window and I didn’t get to work with him on the Intercontinental/US Title level and then they offered me the Cruiserweight thing and the story of losing weight and whatever.”

Hardy continued.

“I think because I embraced it and looked at it the best we can, I think the initial plan was for me to win the Cruiserweight Title and then probably drop it to Rey at WrestleMania but I started getting over. I was really getting into it and I think even Vince saw how much I was into it and that’s where they changed the finish. The original finish was that Rey was supposed to beat me at WrestleMania, but they changed it so we could drag it out and build it to a bigger match where Rey could end up winning the title because they thought they had some legs to that program. So, that was pretty cool, it was quite the compliment and we ended up going to the big match in Anaheim on the television show. Rey overcame the villain and won the Cruiserweight Title in his home state of California.”