The Great War Between Decay And The Hardys May Have Been TNA’s Bonkers Magnum Opus

Impact Wrestling’s Bound For Glory event still went down on Sunday, despite rumours of the company’s uncertain future. In a show with a Cody Rhodes debut, and further abortive attempts to make Bobby Lashley A Thing™, the most important event of the evening was the in-ring showdown between the Hardy brothers and the Decay for the tag team titles.

If you’re somehow only now going off the rails on this crazy train, we encourage you to go back to where it all began with our recap of The Final Deletion. Next in the series came DELETE or DECAY, and the ensuing aftermath/robot friendship backstory. Now, Broken Matt Hardy looks to finish what the Decay started by going to war. This obviously contains spoilers for Impact Wrestling’s Bound For Glory pay-per-view, so if you’re looking to avoid ’em, you should probably click away from the clearly makred recap. We suggest revisiting the Broken EC3 parody instead, because of course we do.

Matt Hardy gave his own recap to kick off the show; a recap so simple even a child could understand it. No, really, it was for an actual child:

Much like the first installment in this epic trilogy, The Great War isn’t so much a wrestling match as it is the theatricality of pro wrestling playing out in and around a wrestling ring. If you try to take it simply as “a match” then realistically it’s terrible, senseless garbage that ultimately means nothing. Instead, let’s look at it as we’re intended to: the grand finale of a of an unconventional and ambitious mode of storytelling that also happens to be a feud for a pair of tag titles:

Were they successful in transitioning from the Hardy Compound to a live PPV setting? If the Decay wins, does Crazzy Steve get to add the Z from the Hardy Boyz name to his ever-growing collection? And does the addition of a commentary team hamper the self-directed narrative of the “match”? (First spoiler: good god, yes it does)

Last week Reby tried to get her revenge on Rosemary for what went down back in Cameron, but got put through a table instead. After healing her wounds and cleaning chipboard out of her extensions, Reby is here at Bound for Glory to support her husband and brother in their fight against Impact’s very own creepy clown epidemic. Her first task was giving them an appropriate entrance — a medley to render all previous versions of their theme songs obsolete:

Reby gets taken out of the match early on after getting blasted in the face (heheh) with red mist by all three members of the Decay. This allows Rosemary to freely interfere as much as possible, tossing trash cans in the ring, and at one point going coast to coast into said trash can and Matt Hardy. The real action, however, comes when everyone fights to the back.

During the backstage brawl level of Crazzy Steve’s career mode storyline, he grabs a container of water labelled LAKE OF REINCARNATION and dumps it on Jeff Hardy. Much like when submerged in the lake at the Hardy Compound, we end up with one of his multiple personalities: Itchweeed.

Like Willow, Itchweeed is a long-lost Hardy gimmick that answers the question “What if Sportacus and Boomhauer did the fusion dance while tripping balls at a rave in 1999?” He smashes pumpkins (get it? get it??) and watermelons while attacking Rosemary and Steve, only to get a face full of mist. God, is there anything that isn’t Pumpkin Spice-flavoured these days?

After ordering Rosemary to go help Abyss, Steve continues to battle Itchweeed for superfluous letter supremacy. Oh man, nobody tell them about Lucilllle in accounting. Jeff is able to tap into his rage (like a rat in some sort of cage) and transform into Willow. He and Steve continue to throw each other into ladders and stuff, then Willow goes for the pin. One of my favourite moments comes when he only gets a two count, and Willow looks up at the referee with such confusion and contempt for reminding him that there’s still a wrestling match happening for real in real life:

Meanwhile, Matt and Abyss are fighting in the Universal Studios Orlando parking lot, away from as much licensed park content as possible. Rosemary comes to Abyss’s aid with Janice as directed, but before he can use his barb-y girl they’re interrupted by the guy they robbed back in North Carolina.

Apparently he’s caught wind of what really went down, and instead of going to the police with the very public and accessible video of his assault, he bought a Matt Hardy shirt and drove to Florida. If that alone doesn’t make you incredibly judgmental of his life choices, he then decides he’s gonna attack Abyss. That … goes about as well as you think it would:

Hey, at least his pants are up and there are no uncomfortable implications of unwanted butt stuff.

Abyss and Rosemary once again commit grand theft auto, but not without Matt Hardy’s interference. He shows up in the truck bed, chanting and throwing fireballs at Abyss because of course he can throw f-cking fireballs.

This takes out Janice, but Rosemary is still behind the wheel. The two fight on the back of the truck as she takes them on a joyride, and not the fun Roxette kind.

Her erratic driving and immediate danger of the situation doesn’t deter Matt Hardy, and there’s presumably no TNA official riding shotgun to count a pinfall should it happen in the middle of the highway, so Rosemary brings them back to the parking lot. There she’s met by her robotic nemesis, Vanguard 1:

The sassy little drone gets his own revenge by misting Rosemary in the face, because this series has more money shots than you get for a $1.99 per month subscription.

At this point, all four men have fought their way back into the Zone of Impact to continue their disjointed attempts at an actual match. Brother Nero sheds his Willow form, ad he and Steve continue to go ham on one another. Abyss decides he’s going to spice things up by adding two barbed wire boards into the mix. Matt doesn’t think these stakes are high enough, and they need to be raised like the roof in a very dated bad joke. He pours tacks over one of the boards, shocking the little girl opposite hard cam, and making me realise that I’ve been to way too many CZW shows to take this as a serious threat. Abyss flounders and ends up sandwiched between the two boards, so that Matt can drop an elbow and squish him in this sharp implement sandwich and remind us that he has his own spot monkey addiction to deal with, and not just his brother’s.

Rosemary has recovered from her robot facial, but so has Reby. She returns with a full face of fixed make-up to take out Rosemary like she tried to steal Maxel and vaccinate him or something:

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Matt decides to grant Jeff a one night only pass on his spot monkey-ism to finish off the remaining clown in the ring. In the end, it’s this swanton from the top of a ladder through two tables that ends the battle, and gives the Hardys the tag titles:

https://twitter.com/totaldivaseps/status/782766328675393536

So what now? Is the Great War over, or is it merely one of many battles that will continue to be fought between these two in the future? Now that his debt is repaid, will Matt Hardy release Brother Nero back to his life of just being Jeff? Will Reby ever get to replace those candles? Whatever’s next, we just ask for less commentary and more Señor Benjamin, por favor.