10 Wrestlers Who Foreshadowed Everything
3. Matt Hardy
No fans? No noise beyond the pained yelps of the wrestlers? No guarantee that viewers would even enjoy it?
Matt Hardy was the one to give us the first glimpse of pandemic pro wrestling.
Final Deletion's intentions might not have been quite as bold as that, but they were brave enough to ask some of the above questions when the match aired on Impact in mid-2016. Whilst not the first match to be retrospectively labelled "cinematic" nor the originator of the pre-recorded crowd-free brawl, this was experimental in the extreme and enough of a diversion from the norm that it drew quite the line between those that got it and those that suddenly imagined common-or-garden pro wrestling as something altogether more sacred.
It was helped by the brothers at least appearing to beat the absolute sh*t out of each other in the self-styled hell. For all this looked different from the wrestling norm, it looked substantially more like it hurt too. For all it offered, the exhibition badly missed the roar of the crowd. Within a few years, wrestling would have to get used to that.