Matt Hardy Talks The Risks Of Experimenting With The ‘Broken’ Gimmick, The Origins Of ‘DELETE’

Matt Hardy talks about the origin of “DELETE.”

“Broken” Matt Hardy and the universe that would grow from the creation of that character extended the career of Matt Hardy, Jeff Hardy, and the entire Hardy family when it was created in 2016. Now, Matt Hardy is taking a deep-dive look into the creation of the character on his podcast, The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy. 

The latest episode of the podcast features Matt Hardy diving into the formation of the character and all of the idiosyncrasies that came to be associated with the character. Of course, this was a major risk for Matt Hardy and his family to turn away from the established brand of The Hardys, which had become a phenomenon within the professional wrestling fandom over a decade prior to then.

Speaking about the risk-taking aspect of the character change, Matt Hardy said you have to be willing to evolve, even if it potentially means fans not understanding what you’re doing at the beginning

“You have to be not afraid to take that risk of doing something crazy, you can’t be afraid to think out of the box, you have to try different things,” said Matt. “I always feel like because we kind of control our destiny, because it’s pro wrestling. I think you can always bring people back even if you do something and like, piss them off that they don’t like or whatever, I think you can turn around and bring people back. Still, you might lose a certain status that people might look at you from. But I think being not afraid to take a risk on a creative level like that is so important in pro wrestling in this day and age.”

Another huge element of the Broken Hardy Universe would be the actual Hardy compound and the real-life home of Matt and Reby Hardy. Matt Hardy put over the addition of his wife to the storyline, saying about her piano playing became such a big aspect of the characters going forward and Matt Hardy remarked that she also had a lot of great ideas add to the story moving forward.

“Her playing the piano is something that was huge in that,” said Matt. “Pianos and then music became such a big part of that whole act and the whole gimmick and the whole House Hardy concept. So she was a very integral part of everything plus, you know, we bounce ideas off one another and she had a lot of great ideas on all these things as well.”

“She was all in and, and we’re just enjoying it that we actually could travel to work together and work together and then be characters that were, you know, connected on screen. So it was a lot of fun,” Matt added.

Regarding whether or not they had any concerns about letting people into their real-life home, Matt Hardy said they were largely comfortable with what they were doing and they felt as though it added another layer of realism and attachment to an angle that was about to spawn its own universe. Matt Hardy also spoke about the difference between his family life and that of Jeff Hardy and his family.

Undoubtedly, the signature word associated with the universe outside of “broken,” is “delete.”

Matt Hardy explains he was simply just trying to be unorthodox and “delete” was a modern way to say exterminate and then it grew and came into a life of its own.

“Literally, I started using it because it was a word that was current and modern, that I think we were still saying, you know, like delete your account or whatever that point. I utilized it because it was like a cool kind of half-assed hit word,” said Matt. “It was something that had never been used before. But then I started hearing like, all these Death Note things and Cybermen [from Doctor Who]  or whatever, I didn’t get the ‘DELETE’ concept from anywhere else, with the exception of probably Googling, ‘destroy’ or ‘annihilate’ or whatever synonyms you know, and probably that’s where delete would have originated from because it was kind of like a hip word at the time.”

Of course, the first look at the Broken Universe really came when Jeff Hardy and Matt Hardy signed a contract For an upcoming match at Slammiversary 2016.

“We were okay with it. We were definitely comfortable with it. I mean, I think that’s one of the big differences between myself, and my brother and his family. I feel like they’re a lot more private, you know, they’re not as open,” said Matt Hardy. “We’re very open about our home and our family. As far as I don’t mind it being out there and people seeing it or whatever. So we are very public, outspoken, outgoing people when it comes to that. So I was cool doing the things in my house and I think Jeff was as well and we had no idea the Hardy compound would become such a great gimmick like it ultimately would be. But the whole point of this segment was to once again show how unorthodox Broken Matt was.”

This segment also presented the first utilization of the phrase, “Brother Nero, I knew you’d come.”  Matt Hardy says he never meant for that to become the phenomenon that it did.

“It happened accidentally. I mean, I obviously meant to say it, but I didn’t realize it was going to get over the way it did, and it’s crazy how that became like a big meme. People were making different versions of that music. I mean, it was crazy how viral that that went in. Obviously, we know when so many people were hitting that, ‘Brother Nero. I knew you’d come,’ we had something to work with. So that was something I was going to always highlight and try and emphasize whenever we’re doing it,” said Matt.

Even in the Broken Universe, Matt Hardy and Jeff Hardy are better together and they are back together once again in AEW as Jeff Hardy made his debut on Wednesday, March 9. You can read what Matt Hardy has to say about his brother joining All Elite Wrestling at this link.

You can check out Jeff Hardy’s reaction to his debut at this link.

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