Josh Matthews Says He Knew Matt Hardy’s “Broken” Gimmick Was Special When He First Heard About It

Josh Matthews always knew Matt Hardy’s idea was going to be special.

In 2016 the wrestling world got their first taste of “Broken” Matt Hardy. Matt Hardy went on to turn an outlandish character into one of the more popular acts in all of wrestling alongside his brother Jeff and all of the other aspects and characters of the gimmick involving his wife Reby, Senor Benjamin and Vanguard 1. When Matt, Jeff and the rest of Hardy clan separated from IMPACT there was a drawn out legal battle between both sides and it came down to who owned the I.P. to the gimmick. The legal battle carried over to when Matt and Jeff returned to WWE in 2017 and in early 2018 Matt gained sole ownership over the ‘Broken Universe’. 

When this idea was first brought up to officials and talents in IMPACT such as Jeremy Borash, Josh Matthews, Jeff Jarrett and others, it sounded peculiar but brilliant at the same time according to Josh Matthews. Josh first got word about the gimmick during the Thanksgiving holiday of 2015 when he talked to Matt Hardy on the phone for almost an hour about the ideas Matt had and Matthews recalled his initial thoughts about the “Broken Universe” when he chatted with Sam Roberts during an episode of ‘Notsam Wrestling’.

“When Matt Hardy called me on Thanksgiving and told me about this… So it hadn’t happened yet. It was gonna happen in 2016. It was Thanksgiving day and he said, ‘Hey I just got done having Thanksgiving with Jeff. Listen to this idea’, and he tells me the idea, literally everything, beginning to end — we’re gonna have a match in the woods, we’re going to put a ring in the woods, we’re going to do this, we’re gonna do that and I said, ‘Matt you’re nuts, but this sounds amazing, and if you guys can pull this off…’, and he told me, ‘I’m going to have amnesia and I’m going to do this with my hair and think about the character from Sweeney Todd’ and he’s telling me all about this and I hung up after like an hour on the phone with him and I started telling Ashley [Madison Rayne], ‘This is what he wants to do. This is his plan, and… he’s broken’ and I thought about it all night and it was brilliant and then he executed it and it was amazing, and Broken Universe was something that was so unique [in] IMPACT and so cool… amazing. I can’t say enough good things about that and it was all Matt’s brainchild.” Matthews shared.

Matt Hardy is now “Woken” in the WWE and Hardy has not wrestled since this past September but during a interview in October he stated that he’s confident he’ll be back on WWE TV soon.

If the quote in this article is used, please credit the ‘Notsam Wrestling’ podcast with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.