Matt Hardy Reveals Which WWE Superstars Inspired His Broken Gimmick

Matt Hardy has been experiencing a whole new phase of his career thanks to how well his "Broken" Matt Hardy persona has taken off with fans, and he recently broke down the WWE Superstar inspirations behind the concept. Speaking with The Chris Van Vilet Show (as detailed by Wrestling Inc's Ross Kelly) about the subject, and revealed that he was aiming to do more of a throwback to the more magical characters like The Undertaker and Papa Shango in order to help him stand out among from the younger talent who are in the prime of their athletic ability and physical shape.

As Hardy broke it down, "Well, I mean, that's why the whole 'Broken' Matt Hardy character was created in the first place. Because thinking back and looking at the landscape of things, all these young guys that are 25-35 that are in super top shape, super athletic and super healthy in so many ways, and don't have their body covered with scar tissue like mine is."

Elaborating further, Hardy then revealed how he thought of those mystical WWE characters to help develop his new persona, "When I was thinking about those characters, I said, 'what if I could do a throwback to the days of Papa Shango? The days of The Undertaker? Trying to create a character that's somewhat magical, somewhat over the top? And that was the whole mindset."

As for the inspiration behind "Delete!" and how well it got over with the crowd almost immediately, Hardy revealed that he was planning to lead toward "Broken" as his main focus, "...I realized 'Delete' got over – that wasn't the initial term I was going to build around with the 'Broken' Matt. Broken was going to be the thing I was going to build around initially...But whenever we did the Final Deletion, and I shot the fireworks across the ring, and Jeff had a trash can lid and was holding it, and blocking these fireworks I was firing at him, and I was going, 'Delete! Delete! Delete! 'Delete!'"

Elaborating further, Hardy revealed how all of it coalesced to using "Delete" as his big catchphrase from there on out, "I mean, that is a moment that people kept talking about, and they kept using that word over, and over, and over again. And 'Delete' happened to be a word that was kind of cool and lexicon currently, in some ways. So, the 'Delete' word worked and people picked up on it immediately, and it actually became kind of the centerpiece and nucleus of the whole 'Broken' character."

What have you thought of Matt Hardy's Broken character so far? Which promotion do you think felt the most impact from this new direction? Surprised to see Hardy draw inspiration from WWE's mystical characters of the early era? Let us know all of your thoughts in the comments!