10 Wrestlers Who Innovated New Stipulation Matches
7. Matt Hardy - Cinematic
The origins of the in-vogue cinematic match are, like most genres, knotty and unverifiable.
WCW produced mini-movies in the 1990s - phenomenally awful mini-movies - and the WWF experimented with pre-taped elements in its most lowkey creative year, 1996, splicing recorded footage with live elements to create new match genres in the form of the Hollywood Backlot and Boiler Room Brawls.
Lucha Underground pioneered a cinematic presentation and narrative framework, with cut scenes and intentionally fantastical storyline elements removed entirely from an emulation of sport. Japan's Dramatic Dream Team promotion embraced the absurd, but the punchline was the intentionally clumsy welding of trad pro wrestling onto utterly incongruous locales.
It was Matt Hardy who sensed the the possibilities of a full stylistic shift, and created in 2016 what was since dubbed the 'Cinematic' match: a full-on, pre-taped, edited short film with no delusion of reality whatsoever, in which wrestling happened. The boundless imagination of the endeavour, and the freedom afforded by the post-production process, allowed for an endlessly mutating hybrid genre, a universe, in which farce and slapstick meshed with meta elements to create a new whole unto itself.
WWE, under these trying circumstances, has since borrowed inspiration, and a key creative component in Jeremy Borash, to make best use of its pay-per-view attractions - to actually create a sense of escape, and not a depressing, ironically deafening reminder.