Things keep happening regarding the debate over who owns Matt Hardy’s “Broken Universe” characters, and the situation keeps getting less pretty and less amicable. The latest salvo was fired by Impact Wrestling this week, when Anthem’s Ed Nordholm released a “log” of contact between Impact’s lawyers and Matt and WWE’s lawyers, as well as portions of what he claims is Hardy’s most recent contract.
While there are some fans who think Impact has had a “mic drop” moment and proved pretty definitively that they have the upper hand in this lawsuit, others think this is a pretty bad look for a company president, and also believe it’s not very cool (and probably violates some very real confidentiality agreements) to publicly share a former employee’s contract.
We figured it wouldn’t take long for some insiders to weigh in on this latest development, but we didn’t really expect it to all happen at once. Jim Ross, Eric Bischoff, and Taz have all shared their thoughts, and none of them are very happy with Impact Wrestling.
First up is J.R., who posted the following thoughts in his latest blog.
“Not overly conformable with official contract info, communications, etc being distributed to the pro wrestling media regarding the contract issues involving the Hardy’s and Impact Wrestling. Not sure what it proves or if it helps anyone’s cause other than keeping this private, business matter lingering in the eyes of the public. Just my two cents but most pro wrestling companies have bigger fish to fry than making a matter such as this click bait.”
Eric Bischoff took time out of his Bischoff on Wrestling podcast to talk about the situation.
“Ed’s playing all new levels of small ball. It’s just a very amateur and desperate to me. He’s just playing small ball. It doesn’t make any sense to me. There are confidentiality agreements that go both ways in a contract. When you start making moves like that and posturing. With 250,000 viewers nationwide, maybe he feels the need to hold on to three or four them that may or may not watch the show because of this? That’s what it feels like to me. The audience they have is so small that he’s desperately trying to hold on to half a dozen viewers because he is leaking out info that makes them believe him. That’s how small ball this feels to me. It doesn’t make any sense. You start divulging portions of contracts to defend yourself in the peripheral wrestling media and you are basically hanging a big sign around your neck that says ‘Small Ball’ and on the other side is says ‘Mark’.”
And Taz opined about the drama on his own The Taz Show.
“In my opinion, as a wrestler, [Impact Wrestling now runs] the risk of breaking trust with potential talent that could come work for you. I don’t know why you’d want to go wrestle for Impact Wrestling.”
That’s a pretty decent consensus from some pretty knowledgable and respected people in the wrestling business — a business Nordholm hasn’t been in for very long, it should be noted. Probably the best thing Impact can do at this point is stick to Nordholm’s word and not comment further on this matter until the legal issues are all put to bed. Having said that, I’ll go ahead and make popcorn now.
(h/t to 411Wrestling for the transcripts)
