Wrestling

Matt Hardy Talks Inspiration For His Broken Gimmick, How He Got “Delete” Over, WWE Cinematic Matches and more

on

AEW superstar Matt Hardy recently spoke with Chris Van Vilet to talk all things pro-wrestling. Highlights can be found below.

How the Broken incarnation of his character was based on Papa Shango and Undertaker:

Well, I mean, that’s why the whole ‘Broken’ Matt Hardy character was created in the first place. Because thinking back and looking at the landscape of things, all these young guys that are 25-35 that are in super top shape, super athletic and super healthy in so many ways, and don’t have their body covered with scar tissue like mine is. When I was thinking about those characters, I said, ‘what if I could do a throwback to the days of Papa Shango? The days of The Undertaker? Trying to create a character that’s somewhat magical, somewhat over the top? And that was the whole mindset.

How he got the “Delete” phrase over with fans:

No, I realized ‘Delete’ got over – that wasn’t the initial term I was going to build around with the ‘Broken’ Matt. Broken was going to be the thing I was going to build around initially. But whenever we did the Final Deletion, and I shot the fireworks across the ring, and Jeff had a trash can lid and was holding it, and blocking these fireworks I was firing at him, and I was going, ‘Delete! Delete! Delete! ‘Delete! I mean, that is a moment that people kept talking about, and they kept using that word over, and over, and over again. And ‘Delete’ happened to be a word that was kind of cool and lexicon currently, in some ways. So, the ‘Delete’ word worked and people picked up on it immediately, and it actually became kind of the centerpiece and nucleus of the whole ‘Broken’ character.

Whether he’s seen any of WWE’s cinematic matches:

I haven’t seen all their stuff. I saw the Boneyard Match and I thought it was great. I thought it was done really well, and I think that was one of the smartest usages of Taker that they’ve had in a long, long time. And because Bray and I are buddies, I watched the Firefly Fun House. I thought it was super interesting,” stated Hardy. “For me, considering the way my mind thinks and the way logic is, I thought it was very cool. I could see where some die-hard wrestling fans can also get lost as well. The Bar Fight that my brother just did with Sheamus, I thought it was awesome. I thought it was done very, very well also, and I think it’s one of the things wrestling fans should be also very appreciative that they are getting these matches like this because we are doing all this during a pandemic era in front of no fans, and it’s very hard on us, the performers, to go out there and work in front of literally no crowd.

Check out the full interview below. (H/T and transcribed by Wrestling Inc.)

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply