A former WWE Superstar has revealed that he believes a beloved gimmick did not reach it’s potential in WWE because it was not a creation of Vince McMahon.
Vince McMahon was biased against ‘Broken Matt’ claims Hardy
Matt Hardy, alongside brother Jeff, made a sensation return to WWE at WrestleMania 33 in Orlando, Florida after 7 years away from the company. The ovation for the Hardy Boyz return is remembered as one of the loudest in WrestleMania history but the former ECW Champion has revealed that the plan was always to eventually showcase Matt in the ‘Broken Matt Hardy’ gimmick that he had made so successful during his time away from WWE.
Speaking on a recent episode of his podcast, The Extreme Life Of Matt Hardy, however, the former WWE Tag Team Champion suggested that Vince McMahon did not throw his whole weight behind the gimmick because it wasn’t a WWE creation:
“And I remember Hunter was very open. He said, you know, like, yeah, while we’re figuring out, you know, you’re figuring out all this stuff with the whole Broken Matt Hardy thing. He said, You know, we can kind of start, we can do a Hardy Boyz run. And then hopefully we can do a good Broken Matt Hardy run at the end of it.
And you know, with Vince, I don’t think that, Vince probably was a little biased towards Broken Matt Hardy in general, just because it wasn’t a WWE creation. Because he really is like, if it’s something he creates something he feels like he was a part of, he’s definitely going to lean into it and he’s going to promote it and push it a lot a lot more if he feels like it’s his creation. So this is something that was created outside the walls of Alexandria outside of the WWE, something that got over very much on its own, so I knew it was going to be a little more challenging”.
Hardy would also reveal he was keen to produce a cinematic match with Bray Wyatt, in particular, something that was achieved on the March 19th 2018 episode of RAW, with the pair squaring off in a match dubbed ‘The Ultimate Deletion’.
But, you know, I think I told the story in the Bray Wyatt episode, eventually, you know, then said like, they will stop doing this whole delete thing, they do it non stop. So let’s go ahead and try this thing. Let’s give the people what they want, if that’s what they want so bad. So yeah, I really wanted to do a cinematic match, right from the jump, I really want to do one with Bray Wyatt, when it was all said and done.
So I kept that in the back of my mind. And I was very open minded to what they had suggested, like let’s do a Hardy Boyz run, let’s do as great as we can with the Hardy Boyz. And then, you know if things work out where we can do Broken Matt Hardy or some version of Broken Matt Hardy, and we’ll try and do that to the best of our ability.
The match would end with Wyatt being thrown into the Lake Of Reincarnation, with ‘The Eater Of Worlds’ returning at WrestleMania 34 to help his former foe win the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal.
The duo would go on to win the RAW Tag Team Championship but split soon after and Hardy was used only sparingly on television until his departure in 2020.
If you use any of the quotes from this article please credit the original source with a h/t back to Inside The Ropes for the transcript