What’s the story?
Former WWE Superstar Simon Gotch was a guest on the “Journey of a Frontman” podcast. Speaking to Alex Obert, the host of the podcast, Gotch, who is now known as Simon Grimm, told a backstage story about John Cena watching Matt Hardy’s Final Deletion.
In case you didn’t know...
Simon Gotch was recently released by the WWE. Gotch had been with the company since 2013, wrestling as part of “The Vaudevillians”, a tag team comprising of him and Aiden English. The duo spent three years in WWE’s developmental territory, NXT, before making their main roster debut in 2016.
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Gotch gathered notoriety within the company for numerous backstage incidents and altercations and was released by the company in 2017, following WrestleMania 33.
The heart of the matter
Simon Gotch told Obert a story about the time that Matt Hardy had come out with “Final Deletion”, which was a 20-minute special event while he was still with Impact Wrestling that featured a match between him and his brother Jeff Hardy over the rights to the Hardy name.
Also read: The Final Deletion: Masterpiece or Master Disaster?
Gotch spoke about how WWE Superstar Chris Jericho had an advanced copy of the special, which was given to him by Matt Hardy after he had made an appearance on Jericho’s podcast. Gotch was quoted as saying:
"Chris Jericho had actually been given an advanced copy of it because Matt had done his podcast and he gave him a copy of it. So when we were over in Japan for a couple days, he was showing it to us. He was telling us that this video's insane, it's insane, it's insane, it's insane.”
According to Gotch, John Cena saw the Superstars watching the special and was curious as to what was going on, to which Simon replied by saying that it was the simultaneously the best and worst thing that Cena could imagine.
“So we had a viewing and Cena sees everybody laughing and asks what's going on. And we were like, "Oh, we're watching this Matt Hardy video." And he asked how it was. I said, "Try and imagine the worst thing you've ever seen WWE do. Then imagine if somehow it was good. And he looks at me for a second and he goes, "I don't want to come in halfway. Please tell me when it is over. I would like to watch it."
Gotch then said that Cena ended up watching the video and reacted by saying that Gotch was right.
“I came back in later, Cena was watching the video, he looked at me and said, "You are absolutely right.""
What’s next?
Simon Gotch has been released by the WWE and is now wrestling on the independent circuit under his new name “Simon Grimm”. There is no information as of yet about him signing up with any of the established wrestling promotions outside of the WWE.
As far as John Cena is concerned, he is currently taking a hiatus from the WWE, with his return date rumoured to be July 3rd, 2017.
Author’s take
Final Deletion was certainly a very special event and was probably the most iconic segment of Matt and Jeff Hardy’s run in Impact Wrestling. It was the pinnacle of the Hardys’ “Broken” gimmicks and made for some very enjoyable viewing for their fans.
Let’s hope that we can see a WWE edition of the Deletion sometime soon!
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