Well, we all knew it was coming. We just maybe didn’t expect things to be quite so fully formed right out of the gate.
Last week, Matt Hardy began doing some extremely overt and prolonged “DELETE” gestures following a loss to Bray Wyatt, which was the closest he’d been to his #BROKEN character on WWE television since returning at WrestleMania. Shortly after that segment, word got out that Impact Wrestling had more or less abandoned its claim to the trademark on the Broken Universe characters, and it was pretty much a done deal. This was paired with a report that WWE would be calling him “WOKEN” Matt Hardy, but it would essentially be the same character.
Well, Matt is Woken or Broken or whatever, and his new persona is aimed fully at Bray Wyatt, a nemesis that many WWE fans would agree is OBSOLETE and in need of DELETION. During a trademark spooky Bray Wyatt promo video, the feed was interrupted by Woken Matt, who was 100 percent in #BROKEN mode, with accent, robe, laugh, and silly faces.
It remains to be seen just how much time and freedom WWE will give to Matt; whether he’ll be able to film his own vignettes at his Hardy compound, include Reby, Vanguard-1, King Maxel, Señor Benjamin, and the rest, or even get any vignettes at all that don’t look like normal WWE backstage stuff. I sincerely hope he can do everything he wants to do … and more.
But this is an EXTRAORDINARY start. It honestly reminds me quite a bit of the very, very beginnings of the Broken character, when Matt uploaded a video of him making faces for several minutes. Ah, to return to those halcyon days. Straight up: I’m just happy to have that laugh back. DELIGHTFUL!
