10 Wrestlers Who Have Gone As Far As They Will Go In WWE
2. WOKEN Matt Hardy
Mission accomplished.
That mission was simple: deprive both Impact Wrestling and Ring Of Honor of an act that made far too much noise within the wrestling fandom for WWE's liking. This is the only inferable motivation; it's not as if WWE has approached the character with anything in the way of glee or conviction. How can you fire up that which has no imagination?
WWE might as well have renamed the act TOKEN Matt Hardy, because that's all they've bothered to do. Vince McMahon was actually evidently reluctant to present the closest version of the character on RAW. Through the conduit of Michael Cole, he apologised ahead of the Ultimate Deletion.
With the rights to the gimmick secured, WWE has given us the following:
- Lots of deranged laughter.
- An obligatory piano theme.
- More laughter.
- A diluted version of Hardy's genuine BROKEN brilliance - once - an angle for which, again, WWE apologised. Cole/Vince even referred to it as "obnoxious". It was painfully clear at this point that McMahon tossed this at the end of RAW, bang in the middle of WrestleMania season, for us to get out of our system. Once out of our system, Hardy was relegated to the doubles division. He holds the silver, but you'd have to be a complete WWE apologist to take it seriously as an accomplishment.
As with everything else, it is a mere token gesture.