Trivia / Matt Hardy

• Breakup Breakout:
  • At first, Matt was the Michaels during his Matt Hardy V1 gimmick, during Jeff's first run in TNA. Then the whole Matt/Lita/Edge love-triangle happened, Jeff re-signed with the WWE and became world champion, and Matt became the Jannety whilst still remaining successful. However, after Jeff left the WWE, Matt squandered in the lower card before they both wound up in TNA, where Jeff became the centerpiece of Immortal whilst Matt became a background player in the same stable.
  • At least until Jeff's drug problems got to the point where TNA decided he couldn't work and sent him home. Now Matt's suddenly become one of the main wrestlers of the group... until Matt got put on suspension for chronic lateness and then fired after a DWI, while Jeff was given a second chance and redeemed himself.
  • And then right back into things as Matt's taken on the "Broken" persona, almost single handedly running the feud with Jeff, as despite having being considered for years to have been the Cloudcuckoolander/Bunny-Ears Lawyer of pro wrestling, Jeff now can't seem to hold a candle to the kind of ham Matt's been pulling out.
• Creator Backlash: Matt would later apologize for the infamous "suicide note" video, which he meant to symbolize a persona change, but ended up coming off in poor taste.
• Creator Breakdown: After Lita cheated on him with Edge, Matt's personal life went into a complete downward spiral, as he was completely unable to move on from it (as indicated by how he posted a reenactment of their breakup on his YouTube channel no less than three years after they broke up). This translated into his WWE career, where he found his position on the card slowly and gradually diminished, and by 2010 he was making attempts to get himself fired (which he eventually was). Then came 2011, where, after his brother Jeff Hardy's infamous Victory Road 2011 disaster, Matt somehow made Jeff the more responsible Hardy brother by posting a fake suicide note video on his YouTube channel. People were genuinely distressed and called the cops on him, and when it was revealed to be a work to advertise the "rebirth" of his career, there was massive backlash, not only from his fans, but also from his friends, including his sister-in-law. Since then, Matt has worked to get his life back together and has mostly succeeded, and now used the fodder from all this as fuel for his "Broken" gimmick, which many consider to be the greatest work of his career.
• Fake Nationality: American, billed from Australia during their short-lived Jynx Brothers gimmick in WWE in 1995.
• Fan Community Nickname: "The Broken Bandwagon". They all want to jump on, he does not need you! On the other hand, you are either with him or you are a brother Nero, and those he deems more useful/loyal to the cause of the "Great War" are instead referred to as "The Broken Brotherhood", so...
  • By the time he introduced his "WOKEN" persona in his recent WWE run, he's now used the term "WOKEN Warriors" towards the fans.
• Hostility on the Set: His friendship with Edge was completely wrecked after he found out about Edge's affair with Lita. It took years for them to repair the damage, and while they're friends again, by all accounts they're not as close as they used to be.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: After his DUI arrest in August 2011, Hardy was released from TNA.
• Romance on the Set: Reportedly dated Ashley Massaro for a little while. And of course, there's the whole debacle with Lita and Edge. Eventually, he got married to fellow professional wrestler Reby Sky, and the couple have three sons together.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: By Impact Wrestling's lawyers (later revealed to have been sent by none other than Double J himself), who made the claim that the "Broken Universe" gimmick belonged to them. This was the main reason why Matt couldn't use the "Broken" gimmick when he made his return to WWE. After something close to eight months, and plenty of nasty public and private fights between House Hardy and the Owl, Matt finally became the sole owner of all the rights for use of the "Broken Universe" gimmick on any promotion he wished to. Of course, WWE being who they are, preferred to create a modified version in order to keep the rights (name-wise at least) in case Matt leaves. And thus "Woken" Matt Hardy was (re)born.
• Technology Marches On: The "Matt Facts" graphic from his Version 1 run was modelled to resemble the then-current version of Windows Media Player. When it returned in AEW (as "Matter of Fact"), it was updated to instead resemble YouTube's video player.
• What Could Have Been: He was a major candidate for being the Dark Order's Exalted One in AEW.

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