Matt Hardy Says Referees Were Being Fined For Stopping Pinfall Counts When The Hardys Returned To WWE In 2017

Matt Hardy discusses a recent SmackDown incident.

On the September 26 edition of WWE SmackDown, Tiffany Stratton defended her WWE Women’s Championship against Jade Cargill and Nia Jax. Near the end of the match, Stratton attempted to pin Nia Jax. The referee counted to 2.9 before claiming that Jax kicked out, which she didn’t. Jax proceeded to kick out a few moments after Stratton broke up the cover.

On the latest episode of his The Extreme Life Of Matt Hardy podcast, Matt Hardy said that the incident was unfortunate before noting that the referee should’ve finished the count.

“My takeaway from it was first and foremost, it was unfortunate. I would guess that three of these ladies had a pretty good match leading up to this point and it was pretty unfortunate that happened with the finish. It is what it is. It’s live TV, shit happens, mistakes happen. It seems similar to what you’re saying, like there was going to be a breakup and then eventually still a cover. I do feel like whenever the ref started counting, the ref probably should’ve finished counting.”

Hardy went on to recall how Vince McMahon used to insist that referees finished the count in any situation.

“I do remember back early back in the day, Vince in the mid-2000s, he would be real upset if someone didn’t kick out and the ref didn’t count to three. He made a big deal out of it, he was very adamant that he wanted his refs to count if somebody didn’t kick out. I remember when we returned in 2017 to 2020, there was a point where you would get fined if the wrestler you were counting their shoulders down, if they didn’t kick out and you stopped the count.”

Hardy finished off the topic by showing some sympathy to the match’s referee.

“It’s tough for those refs too because the ref doesn’t want to fuck up the finish. Everybody was kind of on different wavelengths right there and you could tell.”

Elsewhere in the podcast, Matt Hardy spoke about The Hardys appearing on Kai Cenat’s stream. Check out his full comments by clicking here.

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