10 Things You Didn't Know About WWE In 2018
8. Vince McMahon Didn't Get The "Ultimate Deletion" Match
After returning to the company at WrestleMania 33, it took several months for Matt Hard to fully morph back into the persona that had brought both Hardy Boyz back to prominence midway through the decade.
The tweaked "Woken" Matt was close enough for him to initiate a match similar to the "Final Deletion" war he'd waged with brother Jeff in Impact Wrestling, but when Michael Cole teed it up on the March 19th Monday Night Raw by calling it "obnoxious" and apologising in advance, it was clear that the the voice in his headset wasn't a fan.
Hardy confirmed as much following his 2020 exit from the company. Speaking on Chris Jericho's podcast, he noted;
“He watched it in the production meeting and a few people in there had watched already, but after it was over and ended, everybody like clapped and stood up. And he was just kind of looking around and he told a couple people, ‘I just I don’t get it. I just I don’t get it. I mean if it was good, if it does the number, then I’m truly out of touch.’ I think he said that. It kept the audience over 3 million viewers, which was cool.”
Hardy was right with that last assertion, but not the rest of it - the match lost 400,000 viewers and the show overall fell below the number from the week prior.