WWE.com Matt Hardy on Monday Night Raw.
Tonight on Monday Night Raw, Matt and Jeff Hardy faced off against Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder. This came a week after The Revival beat down Matt and Jeff Hardy following the Hardys dropping a whole bunch of hints about their “broken” gimmick debuting soon. So what has been the latest update on Broken Matt potentially coming to the WWE?
The main reason the “broken” gimmick hasn’t come to the WWE yet is because Matt Hardy is in a legal battle with Impact Wrestling (Global Force Wrestling), with there being a question of which one of them owns the gimmick.
The latest update to this legal battle is that on July 14th, Sports Illustrated published a detailed report about the ongoing conflict between Matt Hardy and Impact Wrestling. This includes the revelation that Impact Wrestling and Matt Hardy almost came to an agreement within the past 30 days, which explains the rumors that a deal was about to be reached.
“Both sides came to terms on an agreement, sources say, with the Hardys paying $10,000 to $15,000 for the rights to the trademark,” Sports Illustrated reports.
The deal would have also included a non-disparagement clause, and the Hardys would have signed a press release announcing the deal. However, this evidently fell apart when Impact Wrestling wanted 50 percent of all Hardy revenue, including revenue from Jeff Hardy’s art and music.
Sports Illustrated also reported that Jeff Jarret, the current CCO of Anthem Sports & Entertainment, wants to drag out the legal battle as long as possible in order to discourage Jeff and Matt Hardy from pursuing the case further.
Over the past few weeks, the Hardys have been teasing the introduction of the broken gimmick to Raw, especially last week when they explicitly dropped the words “broken” and “obsolete.” However, based on this new Sports Illustrated report, it sound like we probably shouldn’t expect to see the gimmick on Raw anytime soon.