On this week's WWE Raw, a segment heavily suggested that Matt Hardy's popular "Broken" Impact Wrestling character is finally coming to WWE. Matt Hardy - as well as his brother Jeff - have been professional wrestlers since they were teenagers, and plied their trade for several years before finding widespread fame as The Hardy Boyz tag team in WWE. The Hardys' wars with teams like Edge & Christian and The Dudley Boyz became legendary treasures of WWE's famed Attitude Era of the late 90s and early 2000s.
Despite carving out a career in WWE as a popular singles wrestler in his own right, at a certain point, it became clear that Matt was unlikely to ever eclipse Jeff's level of singles stardom. Unlike Matt, Jeff found himself pushed to multiple world titles, both in WWE, and the brothers' former Impact Wrestling home. That was until a couple years back, when Matt decided to drastically reinvent himself. No longer was Matt just a Hardy. Now he was a being of magic, directed by the seven deities. He had become "Broken" Matt Hardy.
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As outlandish as that sounds, it worked like a charm for Matt, revitalizing his career in Impact to the point where he became easily the most popular wrestler in that company for some time. The crazier Matt's character got, the more the crowd loved it. Matt also drew raves for his movie-esque event matches, such as "The Final Deletion" and "Delete or Decay," which went viral online among wrestling fans. He also eventually got Jeff in on the fun, calling him "Brother Nero."
Unfortunately, as happy as longtime Hardy fans were to see Matt and Jeff return to WWE earlier this year, along with that return seemed to come the end of the "Broken" gimmick. Impact Wrestling purported to own it, and while Matt disagreed, little headway seemed to be being made. Well, with Jeff currently on the shelf with an injury, it appears that WWE has decided to finally press forward with resurrecting Matt's "broken condishtion." Or at the very least, a gimmick just close enough to that to not incur legal action.
On Raw, Matt was squashed pretty easily by Bray Wyatt, continuing a recent trend of him losing. Afterward, Matt seemed to suffer a mental breakdown in the corner, repeatedly yelling "DELETE." Announcer Michael Cole even wondered aloud if fans were seeing Matt break before their very eyes. Afterward, Matt sent out a tweet saying "YEEAAAASSSSSSSS! My dormant CONDISHTION has been #WOKEN." While it remains to be seen if WWE will allow Matt the creative freedom with his "Broken" character that Impact did, it seems clear that the former "sensei of Mattitude" is headed down the broken path once again.