10 Times WWE Tried To Recapture The Magic (And Failed)

Ugh. If there's one thing WWE enjoy more than poorly ripping off their own past ideas, it's taking another company's game-changing concept and WWEifying it. Case in point: 'Broken/Woken' Matt Hardy.

Love it or hate it, the 'Broken' persona of Matt Hardy created a fresh buzz around the business, the likes of which hadn't been seen in years. The elder Hardy Boy had finally cast his own shadow, and positioned himself front and centre of the industry as one of the most out-there thinkers in the game. The Final Deletion was loathed by wrestling purists, but it provided us with something different, something so out of the box that it would never have been allowed to happen in the world of WWE until it found popularity somewhere else.

Following the immense attention for Brother Nero, Señor Benjamin, and Smokin' Joe the kangaroo, the stupendously bad House Of Horrors match was born. The outrageous cinematic matches we got at WrestleMania 36 may never have been conceived, pandemic or not, without The Final Deletion. As soon as the 'E got their hands on Matt Hardy, the slickness of the production and the overreliance on certain noises and catchphrases (a common WWE trope) got the better of the angle. They managed to turn the most unique and talked-about character in wrestling at the time into a one-dimensional Superstar, falling into line back in the mid-card.