10 current WWE Superstars and what happened on their WWE debut (Part 1)

#8 Matt Hardy (1994)

It took 23 years for Matt Hardy to become "Woken"

Matt Hardy began to make his name in the wrestling business as one half of the Hardy Boyz in 1998, but his first match in WWE actually came way back in 1994 – just one year after Monday Night Raw started – in a match against veteran Nikolai Volkoff on Raw.

There was hardly any mention of Matt from the commentary team, with the match simply designed to tell the story that the villainous Volkoff had begrudgingly joined The Million Dollar Corporation because he had fallen on hard times.

Matt, a short-haired 19-year-old at the time, showed off some high-flying offence during the match before eventually submitting to Volkoff’s Boston crab.