Impact Wrestling Releases Legal Grip: Matt Hardy can be ‘Broken’ in WWE

After Matt Hardy suffered a loss to Bray Wyatt on RAW he had a moment where he unhinged, awakened, stirred, or shattered, but no one was sure if he had actually ‘Broken.’ But, for the first time since returning to WWE at WrestleMania 33, Matt Hardy can finally (legally) be ‘Broken.’

Anthem Sports and Entertainment, the company that owns Impact Wrestling released a statement to Sports Illustrated today that announced they will allow Hardy to use the beloved character.

“We have seen the character development and will be interested to see where they take the concept. Our new talent agreements all incorporate language that allows talent to continue to use their IMPACT persona after they leave the company. We are working with our legal team to amend our existing agreements to extend this to all of our current and former talents.”

Until now, Anthem hadn’t budged on their stance against Hardy using their intellectual property. Frankly, as time continued to pass, it looked like the cult classic personals of Broken Matt and Brother Nero would just be remembered as the last good thing TNA ever did. While that still may prove to be true, we now can assume that these characters will be revived in WWE.

However, don’t be too surprised if WWE tweaks the Broken brothers just a little. WWE typically polishes or at least slightly repackages nearly all of their acquisitions. So while they’ll certainly be acting Broken, WWE may call them something like that (Hardy himself has already been using #WOKEN) But then again, AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Shinsuke Nakamura, and Bobby Roode all got to keep their names from previous employers, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

If anything, this should be a moment of catharsis for the Hardy family. To their credit, they were relentless in their efforts to keep their Broken dreams alive. Even while on WWE television, Matt seemed to toe the line of what was legally acceptable just to keep his creation relevant to the wrestling world. Their dedication certainly paid off, and hopefully, we get to see these memorable characters manifest to their fullest in WWE.