After nearly a year of thinly veiled allusions and legal red tape, the Broken Matt Hardy character is in WWE. Traditionally, Vince McMahon makes new wrestlers dump their old gimmicks completely; he doesn`t want anything in his company that he cannot trademark and control. He made an exception here; that he is allowing Matt any degree of creative input is noteworthy.Matt and Jeff Hardy were fan favorites when they left WWE in 2010. They bounced about for a bit in the indies, but eventually, they both landed at TNA. And it was there that Matt devised his `Broken` gimmick.The basic storyline was this: Matt`s mind snapped. He began speaking to `The Seven Deities` and believed his soul to be thousands of years old. He talked and dressed like a bad Star Trek cosplay. And he picked up a whole bunch of verbal tics and physical quirks. He dyed a white stripe into his hair. He smiled like he was in a toothpaste commercial. He didn`t pin or defeat an opponent; he #DELETED them from all space and time.Unhinged maniac gimmicks aren`t unusual in professional wrestling. But the lengths to which Broken Matt Hardy took things were. He had a Lake of Reincarnation in his backyard that could revive injured wrestlers. He had a sentient drone, Vanguard 1, that could also teleport him to anywhere in the world. And his whole family was in on the act. His infant son was King Maxell. His father-in-law was Senor Benjamin. And his brother, Jeff, was Brother Nero. Together, they created a gonzo series of shorts and sketches that fleshed out an entire `Broken Universe.`You know how WWE haters always call the shows `fake?` The Broken Matt Hardy gimmick is both an embracing and a middle finger to that sentiment. It takes `fake` to its extreme; the goal is to do the most off-the-wall schtick possible. It`s an extremely meta, anarchic sort of commentary on professional wrestling itself, challenging the audience to swallow increasingly improbable story twistsSo when `Woken` Matt Hardy debuted on ...
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