Did WWE Just Prove They Won’t Ever Push Matt Hardy?
On 8 January, Hardy wrestled his first match under the WOKEN gimmick. While the grandiose piano did make its return, the theme’s sting was painfully predictable. Hardy’s laughter, of course, heralded his arrival. The irony was palpable. That joke wasn’t funny anymore. In the background, Hardy’s tron made visual the complete lack of effort. It bore the words ‘Hardy Boyz’, like it had since April of the previous year.
WWE had more than a month to come up with something. They didn’t bother. “This Matt Hardy is totally different!” Booker T offered on commentary. He was right - but not in the way he intended.
WWE have indicated, since literally the seventh day of the push, that they didn’t want BROKEN Matt Hardy. Not really. Creative have rested on its broad strokes ever since. On 15 January, Hardy eased past his second jobber in as many weeks. He spent much of the match laughing in Heath Slater’s face. This wasn’t BROKEN Matt Hardy in there. It was Hugh Morrus.
BROKEN Matt Hardy was a joy of invention. WOKEN Matt Hardy is a ruthlessly simplistic monetisation of a brand carelessly tossed off by a company both bereft of and not beholden to invention.
WWE wanted the buzz - or didn’t want another company to have it - and WWE wanted the merchandise revenue. It has become painstakingly clear that, despite manning a staff of 20-something writers ostensibly up to the task, they did not want the act. It’s too much like hard work. Cultivating the BROKEN universe requires much in the way of imagination - funny how Hardy himself, and a far smaller team managed it - but imagination isn’t what drives the WWE TV product, dependent as it is on formula and repetition.
Laughing is Hardy’s identifiable trait - something he can do to announce his arrival to the ring, something to market. He is, in reductive WWE terms, the crazy guy with the pantomime laugh. It is his Glorious pose, his Fandango dance. It is the stylistic shortcut with which to obscure the genuine creativity that made him a star in the first instance. In WWE, these primary identifiable traits are pronounced to drastically alienating effect. As if to confirm those cynical suspicions, WWE following Hardy’s debut released an opportunistic viral video in which Hardy’s laugh stretched to a full 10 hours. It both symbolised the missed point and telegraphed Hardy’s immediate future; those 10 hours were essentially spliced into the next month of flagship programming.
In Impact Wrestling, the BROKEN universe expanded at the rate of our own. Genuinely funny meta in-jokes; sentient drones; kangaroo sparring partners inhabited by the ghosts of deceased boxers: this was absurdist excellence both subjectively divisive and objectively original.
In WWE, Hardy simply laughs and laughs and laughs, practically echoing the absconding creative team. CONT'D...