Matt Hardy Opens Up on the Origin of the “You Don’t Understand” Promos

Speaking with Inside the Ropes, Matt Hardy discussed his recent “You Don’t Understand How Hard it is To Be Matt Hardy” videos and wanting to bring back elements of his old Matt Version 1 gimmick. Hardy began posting the videos to his YouTube account in July, where he is going on rants about minor or mundane things that ruined his day. Speaking with the outlet, Hardy discussed how the videos are inspired by social media.

Highlights from the discussion are below, along with the full video:

On his ‘You Don’t Understand’ videos: “You know, while I’ve been off I realized you have to stay relevant, you have to keep people talking about you. I’ve been doing a series, the ‘You Don’t Understand How Hard it is To Be Matt Hardy’ series. And I explained this a little earlier today, my whole inspiration behind that was like — you know, social media is a weird, tricky thing. The greatest thing about social media is, it gives everyone a voice. The worst thing about social media is, it gives everyone a voice, you know? People will complain about anything, even if their situation isn’t even that bad. So that was the whole inspiration behind ‘You Don’t Understand How Hard it is To Be Matt Hardy.’ You have this guy who has a pretty kick-ass life and doing this, but there’s like a snag in this day, or a snag in this day, and of course that’s the point that he’s gonna bitch about and complain about. So that was my whole motivation.”

On wanting to bring back parts of his old WWE gimmick: “I would like to incorporate Version 1 at some point. Just because I feel like people bereave the Matt Facts and the entrance music. I do, to a degree. So that’s something in my game plan. But there’s also some new stuff that I have a couple of other new things in the back of my mind too that I would like to utilize. But I would like to be this crazy, constant stream of change character on television, and almost like you said. When I use that word ‘mulitfarious’ earlier on, like someone who has like all these identities within his body, you know, within his mind. I would love to do something like that, because I feel like as entertainment changes, and especially professional wrestling, you can’t be the same thing for too long. Because people’s attention spans are so short, there has to be a constant, gradual change going on at some point.”