When Matt Hardy’s alter ego Damascus says he’s been around for like 3,000 years, it’s barely a joke – Hardy has been basically wrestling since he was a child hurting himself in his backyard with his brother Jeff. Since then, he’s been a jobber, a high flyer, a tag team specialist, a weirdo, a different kind of weirdo, maybe a vampire, and a cinematic wrestling auteur.
Related: Boneyard Match vs. Ultimate Deletion: 5 Reasons Each Was The Better Match
While most of his wrestling career has been spent with WWE and TNA, Hardy has also spent a lot of time away from the big companies, wrestling all over the place for a very long time. As a result, he has taken on a bunch of name talents that might surprise fans to learn about.
10 Sabu
Sabu’s one of those ECW guys who will wrestle anywhere and everywhere as long as someone pays him, so he’s wrestled for WWE and TNA all the way down to Juggalo Championship Wrestling.
Sabu and Matt Hardy never wrestled a match against one another in WWE – being in the same Royal Rumble does not count – but the two have clashed in singles matches for promotions like Big Time Wrestling and Extreme Rising, as well as in tag matches involving Rob Van Dam and Jeff Hardy.
9 Colt Cabana
Colt Cabana is a veteran of the indies and has wrestled everyone imaginable everywhere on Planet Earth, so, of course, he has wrestled Matt Hardy.
The two have met three times: Once in a singles match for Wrestle Circus in 2017, once in a Pro Wrestling Syndicate three-way match with Teddy Hart in 2016, and once in 2003. That 2003 one is the real surprise because it happened on an episode of WWE Velocity.
8 Blue Demon Jr.
The adopted son of late lucha libre royalty Blue Demon, Blue Demon Jr. has been wrestling since 1985 and is a huge star himself. He even headlined AAA’s biggest show of the year, Triplemania XXVII in an insanely violent Mask vs. Hair match against Dr. Wagner Jr. Also, he was on Lucha Underground.
Related: The 10 Most Insane Storylines In Lucha Underground History
In 2015, Matt Hardy teamed up with fellow TNA star Mr. Anderson and Lucha Underground’s Johnny Mundo in AAA’s Lucha Libre World Cup, a tournament composed of trios matches. Hardy's team took on a trio of legends in the semifinals composed of Blue Demon Jr., the aforementioned Dr. Wagner Jr., and El Solar.
7 Ryback
Matt Hardy wrestled Skip Sheffield in a tag match on NXT before leaving WWE, but he never took on the Ryback until 2016 when the two wrestled a singles match at an indie show called WrestleCade 2016: The Three Count.
What makes it better is that it’s totally Broken Matt Hardy vs. Ryback, which makes one wonder what a Final Deletion-esque match with The Big Guy would be like. Would he fall into the Lake of Reincarnation and come out as one crazy cornfed meathead?
6 Sami Callihan
Another Lucha Underground alum, Sami Callihan and Matt Hardy just missed one another in TNA/Impact, as Hardy quit months before Callihan joined up in 2017.
This was unfortunate, as Callihan would have been a perfect fit for Hardy’s weirdo Broken Universe, considering the Impact version of Sami Callihan apparently has reality hacking powers. The two did, however, end up crossing paths beforehand and fought in a handful of matches for Northeast Wrestling and Squared Circle Wrestling.
5 Nikolai Volkoff
The Hardys started off as jobbers on WWE television as early as 1994, which many fans probably know. As such, one can safely assume they got squashed by Tatanka, The Smoking Gunns, or whoever, which they did.
Matt Hardy’s very first match for WWE, however, was on a random Monday Night Raw, in a losing effort against Nikolai Volkoff during that brief period where Volkoff was indentured to Ted DiBiase. On a completely unrelated note, this was the same episode that debuted Duke “The Dumpster” Droese.
4 Kevin Owens
Most people don't talk too much about Matt Hardy’s time in Ring of Honor – guess if fans are going to talk about anything, they’re going to talk about sentient drones and people getting “deleted.” Anyway, Hardy and Kevin Owens (then known as Kevin Steen) were stablemates in a faction called S.C.U.M. which was devoted to taking over ROH.
Related: 10 NXT Wrestlers Who Were Top Champions In Other Companies
Eventually, however, Matt Hardy would assume leadership and kick Big Kev out of the group, and the two would have a No DQ match at Best of the World 2013. And here’s an even bigger surprise – they actually never wrestled in WWE.
3 Dalton Castle
Dalton Castle is a Ring of Honor guy, too, and was in ROH at the same time as Matt Hardy, but the two never crossed paths during their time in the promotion. Which is a shame, as they’re both incredible weirdos.
They did, however, end up having a match together outside of ROH in 2016. It was in Northeast Wrestling’s Wrestlefest XX, and it was a tag match where Dalton Castle and Caleb Konley took on Matt Hardy and, oddly enough, Rey Mysterio Jr.
2 Ultimo Dragon
If someone were to take a look at any random episode of WWE’s old undercard shows – like the aforementioned Velocity – they will come across some weird matchup or tryout match that exists solely to fill time between Raw recap segments but people would pay good money for today.
Remember when Bryan Danielson took on John Cena on Velocity ten years before that was a SummerSlam main event? Well, one time Matt Hardy and Shannon Moore fought Ultimo Dragon and Funaki on an episode of Velocity in 2003. Of course, Dragon and Funaki lost.
1 Goldberg
Invincible football man Bill Goldberg had less than 30 televised singles matches in WWE, including the modern ones where he squashes a guy to win a championship for a couple of weeks. Only a handful of all those matches are WCW-esque squashes of minor dudes like Rosey or Rodney Mack.
On a random Raw in 2004, Matt Hardy took on Goldberg and lost in 2 minutes and 26 seconds, which in WCW terms is longer than Steve Mongo McMichael but shorter than Scotty Riggs, but the exact same time as Brian Kobbs, for whatever that’s worth. Anyway, how many wrestlers on Earth can say they wrestled both Goldberg and Ryback?
