Every Cinematic Wrestling Match Ever - Ranked!

6. The Great War / Delete Or Decay

The oft-forgotten follow-up to the Final Deletion, The Great War saw the reunited Hardyz teaming up to fight off the team of Abyss, Crazzy Steve, and Rosemary - collectively now known as Decay. While our heroes had a Tag Team Number 1 contenders' match to justify this, their adversaries announced they would be taking King Maxel if they won.

The feud comprised two separate events, both following the same narrative through-line. The first, Delete or Decay, had precious little in the way of actual wrestling and played out more like a short horror movie that culminated in Matt Hardy simply absorbing Rosemary's mist and spraying it back into her face. Also there's a suplex into a pool.

The Great War, by contrast, at least started as a conventional wrestling match, seeing the tag team titles defended at Bound For Glory. After a few minutes inside the ring, things spilled backstage and into the cinematic. Matt set his hands on fire, Jeff transformed into Willow, but before long we were back in the ring where a 400ft Swanton through two tables settled the contest. While it wasn't a global phenomenon like some of Hardy's other work, it's arguably the best-combined use of in-ring and cinematic match structure to date.