When Matt Hardy revealed in early 2005 that his long-term girlfriend Amy 'Lita' Dumas had been having an affair with his close friend Adam 'Edge' Copeland behind his back while he recovered from ACL surgery, many in wrestling instantly assumed that this was part of an angle. But it wasn't. Everything Matt was saying was true and, worse still, he had been fired by WWE over his handling of the situation. Fans were outraged that Matt, the victim, would be fired and, worse still, that Edge and Lita would receive major pushes in the aftermath of the situation. Chants of 'We want Matt' and 'You screwed Matt' rang out on subsequent episodes of Raw and on PPV. WWE had to do something and couldn't ignore the problem any longer so they gave Matt (who was on his way to TNA) a call and worked a deal out. Matt and Edge began a deeply personal and realistic feud in the summer of 2005. Matt Hardy jumped out from the crowd and had a pull-apart brawl with Edge before grabbing the microphone and slamming WWE, referring to 'Adam' and name-dropping Ring of Honor (Hardy had worked with them while he was fired from WWE). After that there were several more close-to-the-bone segments, including a Byte This interview with Lita where Matt phoned in and shared personal details about their relationship. It was pretty gritty stuff that lead to some decent and heated matches between Edge and Hardy, the best of which was their cage match at Unforgiven.
