Matt Hardy - New ECW Champion

I know that I normally write about comic book stuff, but I just can't resist celebrating the win by one of my favorite wrestlers of the current decade.

Matt Hardy has been wrestling for the WWE since the late 1990s. He and his brother Jeff introduced a unique style of tag team wrestling to mainstream audiences. You might say they were just ripping off ECW's style, but in the WWF, the Hardys were on a larger stage with a much larger audience who clamored for their high risk moves and the near-suicidal lengths they would go to destroy their bodies.

Thankfully, despite a few brief periods of injury(or drug)-caused inactivity, the hardys have maintained a certain athletic ability. Jeff still goes for high-risk maneuvers and gets a bigger pop, but Matt has become a more accomplished mat-based wrestler, merging his fast-paced style with the 'WWE style' that myself and the internet wrestling community like to shit on.

Since the official break-up of the Hardys back in 2002, Matt changed himself from a hugely-popular tag team grappler to a singles wrestler with an unknown future. Matt crafted the 'Matt Hardy Version1' gimmick that made him a heel and allowed him to play off the 'I'm better than you' personality that many fans hate about the 'bad guys' of professional wrestling. Fortunately, with the way Matt played the character, fans started to get behind him. Unfortunately, the V.1 gimmick was moved to Raw (so Matt could be with his girlfriend Lita) where it was almost immediately buried, forcing him to lose to all manner of wrestlers whose glory days were long since bheind them.

After an injury at the hands of WWE wrestler Kane, Matt sat at home for a few months while his girlfriend started secretly banging one of his closest friends eventually leading to WWE firing him.

Fortunately, the Internet Wrestling COmmunity got behind Matt and he was soon back in the ring, even though is career was effectively at a stand-still for the next two years, as he entered off-and-on feuds with other mid-carders.

Recently, this changed. Last year, Matt started a feud with United States champion MVP, which saw the two competing in various contests to see who was better. The feud was so good that they eventually won the tag team titles and reluctantly defended them against the few teams Smackdown had to offer, until inevitably losing them last November. Still, Hardy had the last laugh and won the US title from MVP just a few months ago.

As US champ, Matt was later drafted to ECW, where he defended the title on two different channels and two different shows, sometimes in the same week. His lackluster reign ended when he lost the title to Shelton Benjamin just two short months ago.

Thankfully, this freed Matt from a secondary title and allowed him to focus on the ECW World title. If you couldn't tell by the title of this blog, he was successful, but not without his share of speedbumps.

One of the speed bumps was then-ECW champ Marc Henry, a former olympian whose wrestling career up until now was largely a joke, until a racial remark by a WWE writer led to a title reign as a way fo making it up to him. Nicknamed the 'Silverback', Marc Henry could probably swallow Hardy whole if he wanted to.

The other speedbump was Marc Henry's manager, Tony Atlas, a former strongman whose ability to talk is the only thing worse than his ability to foul up the matches he attempts to interfere in. During Hardy's two matches with Henry, Tony Atlas blocked attempts by Matt to make a winning pin while looking confused and completely out of place.

Thankfully, at last night's ECW Scramble match, Atlas was not a factor, as Matt Hardy beat four others (FIt Finlay, Chavo Guerrerro, the Miz, and Marc Henry) to win one of the best matches of the Pay-Per-View.

Now, Matt's the top dog in the ECW yard. The sky is the limit to how far Matt can go as ECW champion. He keeps himself in good shape and does not take advantage of the performance enhancing drugs that other wrestlers use. The last ECW champ to have those qualifications was former World Heavyweight Champion CM Punk.

Could Matt Hardy one day hold the World Heavyweight or WWE title? I think it's only a 'MATT'er of time.