Daily DDT
Fansided

WWE: Matt Hardy May Have Retired, But His Legacy Will Be WONDERFUL

By Laura Mauro

facebooktwitterreddit

It’s been a DELIGHTFUL ride, but it was always going to end sooner or later. In a video posted on Youtube this morning, Matt Hardy seems to have announced his retirement from the world of pro-wrestling.

It doesn’t come as a surprise, exactly. Hardy has been quite open about his recent health issues – he revealed in August that his spine has begun to fuse with his pelvis, which led to a great deal of speculation as to his future with WWE. Nonetheless, the news is something of a shock to the system.

For many pro-wrestling fans who grew up watching WWE in the late 90’s, Matt Hardy has been something of a staple fixture, a fan favourite alongside his brother Jeff. From his early days with The New Brood to the early career high that was Team Xtreme, Matt and Jeff (later joined by pioneer of WWE women’s wrestling, Lita) were indisputably among WWE’s best and brightest stars.

A series of thrilling matches with Edge and Christian and the Dudley Boyz set an impossibly high bar for the tag team division, and the Hardy Boyz high-flying, high-risk style cemented them as perhaps the most exciting young double act in WWE, if not the entirety of American pro-wrestling.

In those early days it was Jeff who seemed the stand-out star of the duo – possessed of a charisma and in-ring style unlike any of his peers, it seemed that Jeff would emerge the better in the event of a Hardyz split.

Yet Matt has proven himself again and again. His Version 1.0 character was a clever reimagining, replete with bizarre idiosyncrasies which would surface time and time again as part of each Matt Hardy resurrection. Version 1.0 saw Matt style himself ‘the sensei of Mattitude’, delivering ‘Matt Facts’ via the TitanTron (highlights include ‘Matt strongly dislikes mustard’ and ‘Matt has never locked his keys inside his car’).

It was successful enough that the crowd began to cheer him in spite of his role as an obnoxious, arrogant heel. A short-lived gimmick, but one that hinted at Matt’s sharp creative mind, and allowed him to showcase a charisma and personality that had previously been kept under wraps.

The uncomfortably exploitative era following the revelation of real-life girlfriend Lita’s affair with Matt’s best friend Edge was simultaneously a high and low point. Edge and Matt turned their real-life antipathy into fodder for a hard-hitting feud which was both compelling and difficult to watch, impossible as it was to tell what was fiction and what was real.

More from WWE

The truth is that nobody really came out of that feud looking good – the hatred levelled at Edge went beyond heel heat, verging on the personal. Matt, initially fired by WWE for being ‘unprofessional’, clearly struggled to handle a storyline that cut close to the bone. Lita dealt with a degree of vitriol above and beyond that experienced even by Edge, and a stigma that would dog her career for far longer than was warranted.

The feud delivered some intense, electric matches – the cage match at Unforgiven was a watch-through-your-fingers affair – but the whole thing felt uncomfortable akin to peeping through the curtains, an insight into a deeply personal affair which, in spite of its success as a storyline, should never have been exploited.

A fun feud with MVP and a stint as United States Champion marked another high point for Matt Hardy, but ultimately he would spend the next few years in the pro-wrestling wilderness, wandering from promotion to promotion until finally finding his feet with Impact Wrestling (then known as TNA).

Boy, did he find his feet. If there’s any justice in the world, the Broken Hardys gimmick will go down in the annals of wrestling history as one of the greatest pieces of performance art ever created. An extended promo delivered within a bizarre, brilliantly imagined universe, the Broken Hardys universe was an anarchic melodrama delivered in such a perfectly po-faced manner that casual viewers and long-time fans alike were left completely unsure as to how it should be taken.

I recall channel-hopping one Friday night and happening upon a Broken Hardys skit, completely devoid of any of the surrounding context. I was equal parts mesmerised and completely baffled. I also realised that it was a work of genius.

The beauty of the Broken Matt Hardy gimmick was that it continually evolved, introducing new elements each time. Recurring characters like Señor Benjamin, Vanguard 1 and Skarsgard as well as the eventual inclusion of Matt’s family made for a fully immersive, all-in storyline the likes of which have become rare in the increasingly true-to-life world of pro-wrestling. That this entire universe was Matt Hardy’s brainchild is vindicating to those fans who’d known ever since Version 1.0 just how vividly creative he could be, when given the opportunity.

It’s fitting that Matt’s last hurrah with WWE should be in the guise of his most successful character to date. When the Hardy Boyz returned at Wrestlemania 33 to a thunderous reception, it seemed that the Broken character might be lost forever in the quagmire of legal proceedings initiated by Impact/TNA. Even when Broken Matt Hardy made his debut – now ‘Woken’ Matt, a necessary repackaging of the same gimmick so successful in Impact/TNA – it seemed unlikely that WWE would allow him the kind of creative freedom that saw the Broken universe go from weird pet project to internet phenomenon.

Yet the Ultimate Deletion, which saw the woefully underutilised Bray Wyatt take centre stage in Matt’s compellingly odd universe, was well-produced and pleasantly devoid of WWE intrusion. And perhaps it never quite achieved the levels of adulation so hard-earned during the gimmick’s Impact/TNA run, but frankly that’s a minor quibble.

Next. Matt Hardy Deserves A Better Sendoff From WWE Television. dark

Matt Hardy took his gloriously strange creation to the biggest pro-wrestling stage of all, and the powers that be allowed him to run with it. While there is absolutely an argument that Matt deserved (and may yet get) a more fitting sendoff from the company he has worked so hard for, for so long, it’s a fitting end to Matt Hardy’s pro-wrestling career that he should be remembered not just as half of Team Xtreme, not just a bitter, jilted man, but as the dazzling creative mind behind one of the most unique and captivating gimmicks in pro-wrestling.

Home/WWE