What’s the story?
Ever since Matt and Jeff Hardy decided not to renew their contracts with Impact Wrestling, the two parties have been in a legal kerfuffle (that’s an official legal term) regarding the ownership of the “Broken Universe” gimmick.
While most of the social media outspokenness from the Hardy camp has been from Matt’s wife, Reby, the brothers themselves have been mostly low-key about it. That seems to be about to change.
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The background...
Just a few days ago, Impact Wrestling President Ed Nordholm decided to leak communication between him and Matt to Pro Wrestling Sheet. Nordholm released details of Hardy’s Impact contract (which seemed to indicate that the IP rights to the gimmick belonged to Impact) as well as indicating that WWE had “no interest” in acquiring the “Broken” gimmick for themselves. Originally, Matt responded thusly:
The heart of the matter
Following all that, PWInsider published an editorial regarding the situation, “OWLS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE WISE…..SO WHY IS ANTHEM DOING WHAT IT'S DOING?” (Anthem Entertainment, of course, being the company that recently purchased the former TNA Wrestling). Matt certainly seemed to agree, linking to the article on Twitter and making this statement:
What’s next?
Now that Matt has decided not to hold back in regards to this whole situation, it’s now just a matter of waiting to see what he intends to say. At the moment, Matt and his brother are still running with their classic “Team Extreme” gimmick, with Matt only offering hints of his broken persona.
Author’s take
Chances are, WWE is mostly interested in Matt getting ownership of the gimmick rather than themselves. While the “broken” gimmick has more legs than the Hardys’ current nostalgic run, it’s hard to see WWE wanting to spotlight a creation they had nothing to do with.
However, if Matt owns the gimmick himself, he’ll be able to integrate more and more of it into whatever WWE decides to saddle the Hardys with later on without Anthem trying to complicate things in a legal sense.
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