WrestleMania 35: 4 reasons why The Usos vs. The Hardy Boyz will not happen

The Hardy Boyz reunited in February 2019 when Matt Hardy surprisingly moved to SmackDown Live to help Jeff Hardy defeat The Bar in a tag match. At the time, it looked as though WWE made the decision to put the legendary duo back together in order to build towards a WrestleMania 35 match with The Usos.

However, the SmackDown Live tag division has not been treated as a priority ever since the storyline between The Usos and Shane McMahon & The Miz came to an end at the Fastlane pay-per-view last month, and Matt & Jeff have only featured sporadically on Tuesday nights since joining forces again.

Even though the rivalry between the popular duos never officially kick-started on WWE programming, both teams teased a possible WrestleMania 35 match on social media, notably during Fastlane when Matt tweeted “Cya soon” to The Usos after they retained the SmackDown Tag Team titles.

Despite multiple teases in recent weeks, it was announced by WrestleMania host Alexa Bliss on the latest episode of SmackDown Live that The Usos will defend their titles against Aleister Black & Ricochet, The Bar and Rusev & Shinsuke Nakamura at WrestleMania, meaning The Hardy Boyz will take part in the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal.

With “The Show of Shows” just a few days away, let’s take a look at four reasons why WWE decided against a match between the two duos on April 7.

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#4. WWE wants more teams on the card

In 2017, tag team wrestling was revitalized in WWE, with matches including The Hardy Boyz vs. The Bar and The New Day vs. The Usos regularly stealing the show at pay-per-view events that were mostly built around singles matches.

In 2018, however, there was a major decline in the quality of 2-on-2 matches at WWE’s biggest events. The Bar vs. Braun Strowman & 10-year-old Nicholas made for a unique WrestleMania moment, but it proved to be the beginning of an eight-month run of below-par tag team storylines on both Raw and SmackDown Live.

Following The Revival’s reported request for their releases in early 2019, as well as AEW’s promise to focus on tag teams, WWE has attempted to make more of an effort with storylines involving tag teams on their weekly shows, especially with Scott Dawson & Dash Wilder on Raw.

Perhaps WWE made the decision to scrap The Usos vs. The Hardy Boyz in order to showcase as many duos as possible (The Usos, Aleister Black & Ricochet, The Bar and Rusev & Shinsuke Nakamura) in a match at WrestleMania, allowing The Hardy Boyz to enter the title scene at a later date.

#3. The card was too stacked

The WWE Universe let their frustration be known on social media last week after Charlotte Flair defeated Asuka to win the SmackDown Women’s Championship in an impromptu match.

Originally, WWE announced that Ronda Rousey vs. Becky Lynch vs. Flair would only be for the Raw Women’s Championship, while Asuka was due to defend the SmackDown Women’s Championship at WrestleMania 35 against the winner of a Fatal 4-Way match between Carmella, Naomi, Mandy Rose, and Sonya Deville.

The last-minute change of plan appeared to have been done not only to make the Triple Threat main event as big as possible, with the addition of a ‘Winner Take All’ stipulation, but also because it would have been difficult to fit Asuka’s WrestleMania match on a card which is already stacked with 15+ matches.

The Usos and The Hardy Boyz have never faced each other, so would fans rather see them finally square off in what would likely be a rushed match on a busy card? Or would it be better to save the match for another time when it has a lot more attention around it? WWE appears to have gone with the latter strategy.

#2. Not enough storyline build-up

The Hardy Boyz reunited on the February 26 episode of SmackDown Live. On paper, that gave WWE six weeks to build towards a match between the legendary duo and The Usos at WrestleMania 35. In reality, however, the rematch between The Usos and Shane McMahon & The Miz did not take place until Fastlane on March 10, so only four weeks of storyline build-up was possible for the match.

Given that the WWE Championship storyline between Daniel Bryan and Kofi Kingston has taken up so much television time over the last month, with two gauntlet matches spanning a combined total of two hours of SmackDown Live, there have not been enough minutes left on the blue brand’s programming to build to WrestleMania 35.

Looking through the SmackDown Live matches at MetLife Stadium, has Samoa Joe vs. Rey Mysterio had enough storyline build-up? No. The Fatal 4-Way tag match? No. The IIconics’ inclusion in the women’s 4-Way? No. AJ Styles vs. Randy Orton? It’s had enough but still not much.

There simply has not been enough time to promote the number of matches that WWE has advertised for WrestleMania 35, and that is without The Usos vs. The Hardy Boyz being added to the mix.

#1. Post-WrestleMania storyline

As we alluded to earlier, the fact that The Hardy Boyz are not involved in the Fatal 4-Way match for the SmackDown Tag Team Championship suggests that WWE is putting their title opportunity on hold until after WrestleMania 35.

We often see major rivalries begin after “The Show of Shows” – Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena (2012) and Roman Reigns vs. AJ Styles (2016), for example – and there are not many ‘dream’ tag matches left in WWE that are bigger than The Usos vs. The Hardy Boyz.

Matt & Jeff were in a similar position in 2017 when they became involved in a Raw Tag Team Championship storyline with The Bar immediately after WrestleMania 33. The teams went on to have one of the best tag storylines in recent years, culminating with The Bar winning a 30-minute Ironman match at Great Balls of Fire.

If The Usos retain the SmackDown Tag Team titles against Aleister Black & Ricochet, The Bar and Rusev & Shinsuke Nakamura at WrestleMania 35, then perhaps we could see another classic tag team storyline play out on SmackDown Live after Sunday’s event.