10 Best Wrestling Match Concepts Since 2000

9. The Final Deletion

Matt’s Broken persona reinvented him after more than 20 years in the wrestling business. It was with this persona that Matt Hardy presented and showcased the origin for cinematic matches in wrestling with The Final Deletion. It was the kind of pure madness and absurdity that only Matt and his ‘Broken’ character could conjure.

It was a July 2016 episode of Impact Wrestling where Matt Hardy’s gardener Senor Benjamin prepared “the battlefield for a massacre” at the Hardy Compound that would be The Final Deletion. The rules of the match don’t differ from a Falls Count Anywhere or No Disqualification or No Holds Barred match - just that strange locations, background music and dramatics are used/very much welcomed. Dramatics like hologram drones, shooting fireworks, Matt manically destroying Jeff’s gardened artwork with a lawn mower and Jeff falling from a 20-foot tree.

This match created a template for successful cinematic encounters, from Matt’s Tag Team Apocalypto and Ultimate Deletion matches to WWE’s own Swamp Fight and Money in the Bank ladder matches in 2020. You could argue Matt Hardy should be getting royalty checks for every cinematic match that’s happened since The Final Deletion. And that would be a substantial income in 2020 with the excess of cinematic bouts that have happened this year.