Matt Hardy Talks In Depth On WWF No Mercy 1999 Ladder Match

Matt Hardy recently spoke with Fightful, where he spoke about the payout for the ladder match at No Mercy back in 1999.

“Initially, in my mind, it was 10 grand. Then I thought, five more and maybe it was 15 grand. There was a number and then it was five grand more. This is per person. I started to rattle everyone’s memories as I spoke to them. ‘Does anyone remember exactly what everyone made?’ Christian reminded me, ‘Remember when Road Dogg pulled us aside and said, if you don’t make 30K each for that match, I’m going to quit the business. You guys killed it.’

“We got $5,000 for the match. I was like, Come on guys, this was a show stealer and people were buying the replay for the match.’ We knew it was special and we addressed JR about this. JR ended up bonusing us each $5,000. So we all make $10,000 on that night. That was the ultimate payoff after we question the $5,000 and we got a $5,000 bonus. We said, ‘there is so much buzz and hype, people are buying the replay for this match.'”

Hardy spoke about WWE's reasoning for the payouts.

“JR’s explanation was perfectly logical and he said, ‘Coming into this match, it was a big platform, but you guys weren’t the ones selling this pay-per-view. You weren’t Stone Cold, Triple H, Undertaker, DX. You weren’t a main draw who brought the people to the show or made them buy the pay-per-view.’ We did get highlighted with them so it was understandable. He did buy into our point of buying the replay because of the match and it created a buzz. So, they did bonus us.”

Hardy spoke about the 1999 payout downside guarantee:

“Back then, we had downside guarantees. In 1999, my downside was $75,000. If you busted your ass, worked hard, and got over then you could make double, triple, quadruple the guarantee. In that year, we tripled our guarantee. In 2000, we made 13 times our guarantee.”