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The Hardy Boyz
Matt & Jeff Hardy
1995 - Present
WWF/E World Tag Team Champions
TNA World Tag Team Champions
ROH World Tag Team Champions
WCW Tag Team Champions
NXT Tag Team Champions
Written by Canadian Bulldog
Over the past three decades, Matt and Jeff Hardy have established themselves not only as one of the most enduring teams in wrestling history, but also one the most successful duos of all time.
The early history was impressive, though not exactly of main event caliber. The brothers from Cameron, North Carolina began entertaining their friends and family with a backyard organization known as The Trampoline Federation. This eventually morphed into a group known as OMEGA, which produced several future wrestling stars; in addition to Matt and Jeff, Shane "Hurricane" Helms, Shannon Moore and Joey Mercury cut their teeth in the independent group.
They were soon signed as enhancement talent to the WWF, mostly doing jobs to the likes of Razor Ramon and King Kong Bundy. I saw them live in one of their first "big" WWF outings on the Sunday Night Heat taping that aired directly before In Your House: Breakdown in 1998. While their team name "The Hardy Boyz" seemed like a rip-off of the famous literary duo, Matt and Jeff pulled the upset win over Kaientai (Sho Funaki and Mens Teioh) to a surprise reaction in Hamilton, Ontario.
People first began paying attention to Matt and Jeff when they brought on WWE Hall of Famer Michael "P.S." Hayes as their manager, upsetting The Acolytes (Faarooq and Bradshaw) for the WWF World Tag Team Championship in 1999. While the title reign didn't last a full month, it set the stage for bigger things to come.
Later that year, Matt and Jeff found their wrestling soulmates in Edge and Christian, defeating the Canadian duo at 1999's No Mercy show in the first-ever Tag Team Ladder Match.
Over the next two years, E&C and The Hardyz would bring The Dudley Boyz (Bubba Ray and D-Von Dudley) into their matches, setting up some classic Ladder and TLC matches between the six men, forever cementing their legacies.
While most tag teams would consider this the apex of their careers, Matt and Jeff continued evolving. With Lita in their corner, Team Xtreme collected the WWF and WCW Tag Team Titles several more times.
In 2002, WWE tried splitting the duo up, pushing Jeff as a colorful babyface and Matt as an upper mid-card heel. Substance problems plagued Jeff and he was released by WWE in mid-2003, showing up later in TNA. Matt suffered his own issues after Lita (his real-life partner) pursued a relationship with Edge, causing the elder Hardy to act unprofessionally and temporarily get himself fired from the company.
By 2006, Matt and Jeff Hardy were reunited in a WWE ring, battling teams such as Rated RKO and MNM to critical acclaim. Once they exhausted most of their options as a duo, WWE decided to split them up once again, this time pitting Hardy against Hardy at WrestleMania XXV.
The split didn't exactly set the world on fire, and within the year, both brothers were against out of WWE. They resurfaced in TNA and, through years of trial and error, eventually stumbled upon another main-event act.
In 2016, Matt became Broken, and after another feud with his brother, the team reunited as The Broken Hardyz, an act that would win them gold in TNA, Ring of Honor and elsewhere. WWE was noticing the increased interest in the brothers and brought them back at WrestleMania XXXIII to one of the biggest pops in the event's history, as the duo defeated three other teams to win the Raw Tag Team Championship that night.
While The Hardy Boyz lasted a few more years in WWE, nothing would match their initial return. The brothers had a brief run in AEW before returning to TNA in 2024. There, the duo picked up where they left off, capturing the TNA World Tag Team Championship as well as having a brief run with the NXT equivalent.
How much longer will Matt and Jeff Hardy continue on as a team? Injuries, age and other issues may ultimately determine their final run as a tag team, but after three decades of action, one thing is for sure: no one is confusing them with the mystery-solving Frank and Joe Hardy any more.
