Jeff Hardy isn’t exactly angling for a match with CM Punk as much as you might have heard.
A recent interview featuring Jeff Hardy gained some attention after the interviewer, Tim Hann Rivera, asked Jeff to name his ideal retirement match.
“Ultimately man, I’d like to do a match in the WWE and do the Hall of Fame and all that stuff to really end it on the highest note possible. Because looking back at my career now, the history is just a glimpse, like the blink of an eye,” Hardy told Rivera. “When you achieve so much and then you’re here at this point older in life, it’d really be special to have a killer match, maybe make CM Punk retire and then go into the Hall of Fame.”
Hardy and CM Punk’s history dates back to 2009, when they feuded over the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. This was Hardy’s final storyline in WWE for several years, and Punk could claim he “retired” Hardy from WWE. Punk was also asked about Hardy’s remarks, but he seemed a little less optimistic that the match would happen in the near future.
“He said he wants to retire me? I’d like to be able to fly, but I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon,” CM Punk told Alex McCarthy of Mail Sport. ”I think there’s got to be a lot of bridges crossed. I don’t know how many years I have left. I’m all for giving people second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth chances. There are a lot of experiences I didn’t enjoy so much, we don’t have to get into it, but I just root for people to be free of whatever demons possess them. If he’s coming back here, great, let’s see what happens.”
The Hardys react to CM Punk’s comments about a retirement match
The Hardys spoke with WrestleZone ahead of TNA’s upcoming television tapings in St. Joseph, Missouri, and they were asked if they’d heard about Punk’s reply. As it turns out, they did, and Jeff Hardy revealed that he was only joking about the epic plan for his WWE return.
“We did see it. But it’s so funny because whoever was interviewing [Jeff] pitched it to him like it was a serious question, like it was a serious statement. It’s been like one of Jeff’s ongoing jokes that he does,” Matt Hardy said. “Jeff has a very dry sense of humor, but he’s very funny. And he [played along and said], ‘Yeah, maybe we will end up [back in WWE]… We’ll do the Hall of Fame and 2030, I’ll retire CM Punk.’ Or whatever. [It’s a response to] ‘CM Punk retired him in 2011,’ that was the ongoing joke which was so funny.”
“Yeah, I hear that so much still to this day,” Jeff Hardy said. “‘In ’09, man, when CM Punk made you retire. Oh My God! I cried.’ I hear that so much, still to this day. So, yeah, I just said that as a joke one day. And I saw that, my wife showed it to me first. And I saw it through Matt. And yeah, I’d like to fly. But that’s not going to happen.”
Hardy also told Chris Van Vliet that he still gets compliments on the feud with CM Punk. Despite admitting his original comment was a joke, he did say it could be fun to revisit the pairing.
Check out our full interview with Matt and Jeff Hardy below:
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