Category: fighter

If you’re even a casual fan of the WWE, you know Matt Hardy’s name.

And you definitely know it if you’re a fan of tag team wrestling—along with his real-life brother Jeff, Hardy was one half of the Hardy Boyz tag team, which won a string of championships starting back in the 1990s.

Along the way, Hardy has proven himself to be a master of various wrestling gimmicks and character shifts. When he started his WWE solo career in 2002, he created his “Version 1” persona, which put him on the map as a creative force of sorts.

That led to a string of different characters, and in 2016 Hardy created the character of “Broken Matt,” adding a supernatural touch that wrestling critics loved. The character featured bleached blond hair, a bizarre accent, and ongoing references to eliminating his brother Jeff, whom he referred to as “Brother Nero.”

The success of the Broken gimmick eventually led to a furious legal battle, with the Hardy clan claiming ownership of the concept and eventually going to war with TNA before it became Impact Wrestling.

Legal battles aside, Hardy’s singles match career was every bit as successful as his tag team ventures, as he copped title after title while entertaining WWE fans with his antics along the way.

But Hardy has been in the news lately for an altogether different reason. He recently allowed his WWE contract to expire, and his character was seemingly written out of the WWE script after Hardy was attacked by Randy Orton.

The WWE reportedly offered Hardy a new contract that included some brand work, which is understandable given that Hardy turned 45 this year.

But Hardy has insisted that he’s not done in the ring, and he wants creative control of his character while he can still compete.

He’s referred to this transition as a “creative renaissance,” and apparently he’ll be taking his creative talents to All Elite Wresting. Rumors abound about Hardy’s new character, the “Exalted One.” Hardy has already tweeted about his new character, and All Elite Wrestling fueled the rumor fire by tweeting out a mention of the Exalted One just moments after Hardy released his video.

Hardy hasn’t ruled out a return to the WWE, but he’s clearly evaluating all his options.

All of this coincides with a dramatic transition over the last few years in Hardy’s personal life. After years of battling problems with alcohol and steroids, he married Rebecca “Reby Sky” Reyes, and Hardy has become a family man with a growing brood. Hardy and Reyes welcomed their third son into the world last year, and they seem to have reconciled the differences that let to a hotel arrest after a domestic fight in 2014. He’s credited Reyes with helping him get clean and sober, and obviously wrestling fans hope the colorful Hardy will continue to keep it together.

It’s obviously impossible to predict what the future holds for a character like Matt Hardy, but one thing seems certain—whatever it is, it’s sure to be entertaining.

Born in Boston as Eric Maher, Eddie Edwards has spent most of his wrestling career racking up championships. His list of titles is absurdly long, so much so that it’s almost an act of futility to try and list them all.

We’ll give it a brief shot, though, focusing on the various leagues where Edwards made his rep. The now 36- year old Edwards made his debut in 20002, competing mostly in an ongoing series of independent promotions. The following year, he became first Millennium Wrestling Federation Television Champion.

In 2007, he began wrestling for Squared Circle Wrestling, where he made a name for himself and was eventually part of a tag team championship outfit.

After that the titles came fast and furious. Edwards spent eight years with Pro Wrestling Noah, where he honed his skills and turned some early losses into an ongoing series of victories. In 2017, he became the first American to win the GHC Heavyweight Championship in Japan.

Edwards also competed in parallel in the Ring of Honor from 2006-2013. He became a member of the American Wolves, but during the end of that stretch he began to focus on singles competition, which also led to a string of successes.

The following decade, Edwards became a staple in Pro Wrestling Guerrilla matches, and he also appeared briefly in the WWE in 2013.

He returned to tag team wrestling with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling/Impact Wrestling, and several years after that he began racking up singles championships, winning his first in the TNA X Division.

There is plenty of tarnish on the trophies, however, depending on how you look at Edwards’ persona and the antics that come with it.
For better or worse, many wrestling fans know Edwards for his more recent, over-the-top gimmick of using barbed baseball bat and then a kendo stick. This started on Sami Callahan, who sent Edwards to the hospital during a post-match Impact Wrestling brawl when a baseball bat accidentally struck Edwards in the head.

The kendo stick, which Edwards named “Kenny,” became a staple of Edwards wrestling repertoire, with various staged feuds with the likes of

Davey Richards that invariably led to all kinds of unsightly mayhem.

He accidentally hurt his wife, Alisha, during a House of Hardcore episode, and Edwards’ act became part of the plots and subplots that were at the heart of many Impact Wrestling matches.

His stage persona eventually paid off, though. In 2019, Edwards signed a multi-year deal with Impact, and this summer he repeated as the winner of the renamed Impact title.

Edwards may have taken on the personality of a madman, but it clearly hasn’t hurt him financially. He’s used his supposed loss of sanity as a lucrative trick that will clearly keep him smiling all the way to the bank.

When it comes to unusual wrestling careers, the story of Frankie Gomez is especially fascinating. It’s full of twists and turns, some of which make him sound like an ideal candidate for a Netflix documentary, provided they can actually find him for the filming.
Early on, the Mexican-American fighter from California was considered a boxing wunderkind. He was feted by the likes of Oscar de la Hoya, who signed Gomez to his estimable stable of boxing talent that eventually became Golden Boy Productions.
Gomez definitely had talent. He was a stellar amateur, and in 2007 he won the Junior Olympic National Championship, along with a Gold medal in the Cadet World Championship. He went on to become the US Amateur National Champion at the age of 17, whipping Jose Benavidez to take that title.

With that kind of talent, it almost seems inevitable that there are all kinds of semi-apocryphal stories floating around about the ultimately mysterious Gomez. One of the more fantastic ones tells the tale about world- famous trainer Freddie Roach, who supposedly didn’t want Gomez sparring with the legendary Manny Pacquiao, lest Roach’s charge end up on the wrong end of Gomez’s lightning-fast hands.

Rest assured, though, Gomez did go on to have an estimable career. He started his boxing journey by going 21-0, beating both veterans and fellow youngsters alike in a variety of settings. He seemed well on his way to stardom, but then one of those strange twists happened.
Gomez, who is still only 28 years old—he was born in 1992—has mysteriously disappeared from the boxing world since that rocket start. His last noteworthy bout took place in 2011, when he defeated Khadaphi Proctor in a fight that was televised on Telefutura.

On to the juicy stuff, which is an integral part of the Gomez story. He was supposed to fight Humberto Soto back in 2015 in a bout at Minute Maid Park that was scheduled to be televised on HBO, with the bout to be given a prime slot.

But the fight never happened. Gomez, who bounced back and forth between two of the lower weight classes throughout his brief career, was 6.5 pounds overweight, and the bout had to be cancelled.

A brief round of negotiations followed, and Soto agreed to up the weight limit to 145 pounds. But Gomez couldn’t make that weight either, checking in 2.5 pounds higher at just over 147.

Soto was still willing to fight, provided Gomez tried to shed a few pounds and there was yet another weigh- in right before the fight. But Gomez was deemed unfit to fight due to the extra weight and the possibility of resulting medical issues, so the bout never happened.

What did take place was plenty of controversy about Gomez’s contractual obligations. His initial signing bonus was in the neighborhood of $400K, and Gomez got to keep the five-figure advance he took on what would have been a $250K purse in his contest with Soto.
Golden Boy VP Eric Gomez—no relation—made a telling comment about the negotiations that took place.
“Somebody has to be the adult in the room,” he said, lauding Soto for taking that role from the other side of the room. “We had to do the right thing.”

But no one seems to know what the right thing is for Frankie Gomez going forward. Many consider his story one of unfulfilled potential, and there has been all sorts of speculative stories about various disasters that may or may not have befallen this talented fighter.

Pictures of him do surface on the Internet every now and then, so this at least debunks the more lurid stories.

But boxing aficionados will forever wonder about what might have been, and the questions about what Gomez did, why he did it, and what happened as a result seem more than justified.