The Hardy Boyz returned to WWE at WrestleMania 33 in 2017 back in their Team Extreme gimmick.
Any continuation of the broken universe that had been created in Impact Wrestling was seemingly
lost, but the reality was that Matt Hardy was in a tight legal battle over the ownership
of the gimmick with his former employer.
Mi nombre es El Fakidor and this is the saga of Matt Hardy vs. Impact Wrestling.
Although it has failed to gain real momentum in WWE, at one point in time, Matt Hardy’s
broken gimmick was one of, if not the most intriguing and original gimmicks in professional
wrestling.
Going from homemade videos posted on his personal YouTube channel to filming the ‘Final Deletion’
match at the Hardy compound, very few would have predicted that a man with a funny laugh
and an inability form a legible sentence would gain such popularity.
It’s fair to say that Matt Hardy put a lot of time, effort and his own money into creating
the gimmick, so he was understandably upset when Impact claimed ownership over it.
This led to some difficult contract negotiations for the team - who were tag team champions
at the time - to resign with Impact.
But things looked to be improving for the Hardys, as Impact were then taken over by
Anthem Sports, and their Chief Executive Ed Nordholm looked to be a more reasonable man.
Still, things didn’t go well.
Pro Wrestling Sheet reported in February 2017 that the Hardys felt disrespected during the
contract negotiations.
Matt and Jeff both wanted creative control clauses put in their deals but this was shot
down by Nordholm.
Pro Wrestling Sheet reported, “One source says their lawyer told Ed Nordholm there was
interest from other companies and he responded by saying, ‘Well, tell them to go to WWE
then.’”
And at the end of February 2017, Matt and Jeff left Impact Wrestling.
They returned to WWE at WrestleMania 33, winning the Raw Tag Team Championships in a ladder
match - but in their Team Extreme gimmick rather than the Broken Hardys.
The day prior they faced The Young Bucks in a ladder match at Supercard of Honor, where
they were not referred to as Broken.
There was some confusion over who owned the Broken gimmick.
Pro Wrestling Sheet reported that sources close to Matt Hardy claimed that Impact held
the rights to profit off any footage shot during his time in the company but once that
was over he retained ownership of the character.
Impact on the other hand claimed that they owned all intellectual rights.
It was also reported that an agreement for the Hardys to pay a total of $25,000 dollars
to be able to use the gimmick elsewhere was nearly made, but this did not happen.
Anthem Sports reportedly then asked for 50% of all Hardy revenue on the gimmick, something
the Hardys understandably saw as a cheap shot and the deal was scrapped.
Anthem were quite heavily on the back foot in all of this, which could be the reason
behind the relatively small amount of money they wanted for the gimmick rights.
They did not fund any of the ‘Broken’ videos or pay rent when shooting an entire
episode at the Hardy compound.
Matt’s wife Reby, who was consistently vocal about her anger towards Anthem on Twitter,
further revealed that neither their son Maxell or her father ‘Senor Benjamin’ were paid
for their appearances.
By April it was being reported that WWE had reached an agreement with Impact over the
rights to use the Broken characters, and Matt continued to use his ‘delete’ chant on
TV to keep interest in the gimmick alive.
Eventually, after months of hostile talks and passive pressure from WWE, Anthem gave
up the ghost and it was reported that Ed Nordholm had decided to make some changes, starting
by righting some wrongs the company had made before he took over.
This included revealing he allowed Matt and Jeff to use the gimmick outside of IMPACT
for the first time.
And it wasn’t just Matt and Jeff who got to keep their gimmicks.
Nordholm told Sports Illustrated in November 2017:
“We have seen the character development and will be interested to see where they take
the concept.
Our new talent agreements all incorporate language that allow talent to continue to
use their IMPACT persona after they leave the company.
We are working with our legal team to amend our existing agreements to extend this to
all of our current and former talent.”
[QUOTE] In November PWInsider reported that Matt Hardy
published the Broken trademark for opposition stating, “If there is no opposition, the
trademark will officially be in the hands of Hardy and available for him to use, within
WWE or independently of the company.”
In December 2017, Woken Matt Hardy finally debuted on WWE TV to cut a promo on Bray Wyatt
- which led to them teaming up and becoming the Raw Tag Team Champions.
Figure Four Online then reported that the reason Matt was Woken rather than Broken was
so that WWE could own the rights to the Woken gimmick.
And should Matt leave WWE and go back to the indies, he could revert back to the Broken
gimmick which he now owns the rights to.
We’ve got other WWE Backstage Expose videos on WrestleTalk so click the playlist on screen
right now to watch more of them.
I’ve been El Fakidor and that was lucha.