Hardy Boyz return to New Orleans for 2 TNA wrestling shows | Entertainment/Life

Wrestlers Matt and Jeff Hardy have made memories in New Orleans. In 2009, Jeff won the WWE World Heavyweight Championship in a daring ladder match that almost broke his shoulder, and his brother led fans on Bourbon Street in his trademark “Delete!” chant on the night before Wrestlemania in 2018.

Also known as The Hardys and the Hardy Boyz, they’ll return this weekend when they appear on Friday night at the Alario Center in Westwego for the Total Nonstop Action pay-per-view “Sacrifice,” and on Saturday for a taping of TNA’s weekly “Impact” show.

They are in their 34th year in the business, and they’ve worked in spaces as intimate as high school gyms and as cavernous as stadiums. Their death-defying moves have become the blueprint for professional wrestling in 2026, and if Matt Hardy has a message for his younger self, it’s to take better care of himself.

“You don’t have to do this leg drop off the top rope every single night,” he says by phone from Atlanta. “I would have told the younger me to preserve your body, pick and choose your spots. Do them when they matter.”

He and his brother Jeff made their name by showing none of that good sense. They opted for high-risk, high-flying moves, which made them legendary in the industry. By his own admission, he walks a little funny because years of leg drops translated to scar tissue in his lower back and hips.

The Hardys are on their second stint in TNA, and Matt thinks of it as a homecoming. They became famous in the WWE, but they rejuvenated their careers in TNA in 2016 when Matt introduced the eccentric “Broken” Matt Hardy character as an immortal soul that could remember all of the lives inhabited throughout time.

“Broken” Matt spoke in an exaggerated, stilted manner and built an entire mythology around him and the Hardy family that resulted in “The Final Deletion,” a movie/wrestling match filmed on the family’s compound in North Carolina. “Broken” Matt was polarizing, but TNA took a chance on a concept that hadn’t been seen in wrestling before.

“TNA allowed us to do things that were out of the box, take risks, and change our characters,” Matt said. “When I was ‘Broken’ Matt and Jeff was Brother Nero, we were white-hot again.”

“Broken” Matt started as a way to focus on his character more than his athleticism. By 2016, Hardy had cut some of the more radical moves from his repertoire to protect his body, but he also needed to figure out how to stand out at a time when a new generation of high flyers took the Hardys’ old moves to new levels.

He wondered, “What if I tried to do a throwback to the ‘80s or early ‘90s where I tried to create a character that was larger than life, maybe even supernatural?”

The Hardys have been in the business long enough to share locker rooms with wrestlers whose ideas of good wrestling came from watching them in the ring.

“We work with so many people who said, ‘Oh, my God, I grew up idolizing you guys, and this is my dream,’” Hardy says. “[TNA’s] Leon Slater is so talented, and when Jeff and I showed up at TNA, he was so excited. We were his favorite tag team. Jeff’s his favorite overall wrestler.”

Recently, the Hardys have been working with the man TNA calls “the face of the franchise,” Moose. The 6-foot 5-inch former football player has held a number of championships over the course of his 10 years in TNA, and at 41, Moose is also trying to reduce the amount of wear he takes in a match.

He’s inspired by the retired WWE superstar John Cena, who “is probably the greatest wrestler because he learned very early in his career how to control the crowd.”

Cena didn’t bother with daredevil moves and got crowds to cheer when he did a handful of safe, signature moves. Crowds erupted when he waved his hand in front of his face while looking down at his fallen opponents and telling them, “You can’t see me.”

“That’s very smart,” Moose said, and he’s following suit, doing “the Moose arm gesture and the Moose chant so I don’t have to worry about killing my body.”

Matt hopes that TNA’s relationship with the WWE might result in an occasional spot on one of their big shows, but he recognizes that TNA could well be the last stop in his career. “TNA allows me a great schedule,” he said. “It allows me so much more creative freedom, and it also allows me more time to be with my kids.”

As much as he craves family time, though, Hardy is realistic.

“I think I’m a lifer,” he said, and envisions a job behind the scenes when his in-ring days are over. “Every time I think I’m going to get out, it reels me right back in.”