WWE legend Matt Hardy admits WrestleMania 42 'felt very prostituted' with ads, short match times

There’s nothing quite like an authentic WrestleMania moment. Having previously experienced what might be one of the biggest crowd reactions ever on the grandest stage, Matt Hardy picked up on the noticeable differences in this year’s WWE showcase.

The future WWE Hall of Famer and current TNA star wasn’t in the building for WrestleMania 42 in Las Vegas earlier this month, but had a vested interest in the weekend and made numerous appearances at fan events like “WWE World” throughout the show’s lead-up. This year, WWE appeared to take its commercial efforts to a new level, receiving criticism for its heavy focus on advertising while limiting match times throughout the two-night event. Speaking Wednesday in-studio on “The Ariel Helwani Show,” Hardy admitted it was wild to see such drastic changes.

"It is definitely so evolved and so different from what the initial concept of WrestleMania was as a mega-event. It felt very prostituted because of all the ads and everything else,” Hardy told Uncrowned.

"I also feel when you go to these [PLEs] like WrestleMania, if you have these big matches between big stars, these matches need to be good. They need to have time. They need to have a good payoff at that point, because that's what you're building to. The TV is the vehicle that you build these matches, and you tell stories, but once you get to these [PLEs] and WrestleMania, that's where you have to deliver the goods. No doubt about it."

Hardy, 51, touched on another one of the big complaints about WrestleMania 42. On Night 1, in particular, only three of the seven matches went over 10 minutes, with the main event between Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton being the only to surpass 20 minutes. Night 2 wasn’t a vast improvement in that regard, as only the CM Punk vs. Roman Reigns main event went longer than 20 minutes.

Compared to just two years ago, only two matches among 13 total went sub-10 minutes at WrestleMania 40; three, if you include Damian Priest’s nine-second Money In the Bank cash-in on Drew McIntyre.

Having been a part of 11 previous WrestleMania events, Hardy worked through the era before WrestleMania was a two-night affair. To many, Hardy was part of the golden generation, wrestling in some of the all-time best iterations of the “Showcase of the Immortals,” like WrestleMania X-Seven in 2001.

The differences now are very in-your-face, says the legend, but in the end, it’s still a WrestleMania.

"Night 2 was obviously the better night,” Hardy said. “It’s just a different product. It really is. It feels very mainstream. They have all the advertisements and everything else. It feels very different from standard WWE. I think it's hard for a lot of people to kind of grasp — the WWE changes.