5 Ups And 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (March 19)

3. The Ultimate Copycat

Matt Hardy Bray Wyatt
WWE

Maybe it’s not fair to compare TNA’s Final Deletion to WWE’s Ultimate Deletion “match” Monday night. After all, how many WWE fans watch TNA?

(Then again, the Final Deletion was one of the more notable things TNA has done in the past few years.)

Woken Matt Hardy’s match against Bray Wyatt at the Hardy compound featured several elements lifted directly from the original Final Deletion: music played as the opponent entered the outdoor ring; a brief battle in the ring; fireworks leading to the action moving into the yard; the dilapidated boat being used; and the opponent thrown into the lake.

While it wasn’t beat-for-beat, it felt similar, rather than reaching for some new territory, aside from Hardy threatening to run over Bray with a riding mower. The Ultimate Deletion wasn’t bad, but it probably isn’t going to inspire WWE to double-down on the character.

Then again, we’ve been dead wrong before, so who knows?

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fortunately became a fan in time for WrestleMania III and came back as a fan after a long high school hiatus before WM XIV. Monday nights in the Carlson household are reserved for viewing Raw -- for better or worse.