Since their Impact wrestling contracts expired, The Hardys have been showered with support and it should probably come as no surprise that Impact Wrestling has taken the blunt of the criticism. TNA had been viewed as the joke of the wrestling world over the past few years with Dixie Carter’s mismanaging of the organization, whereas the Hardy Boyz hold sentimental spots in wrestling fans’ hearts for their death-defying role in Attitude Era history.
When they brilliantly reinvented themselves as The Broken Hardys, fans were not only happy to see their childhood favorites doing well again, but also to see the boundaries of professional wrestling pushed in a wonderfully strange new direction. But despite Reby Sky’s epic Twitter rant aimed at Jeff Jarrett and the new Anthem regime, Impact Wrestling is not the villain in the Hardy Saga.
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The center of the discontent between the two sides revolves around the Hardy’s ability to use their Broken characters outside the realm of Impact Wrestling. The Hardys claim that they invented the characters and while that may be 100% true, it unfortunately does not guarantee them the legal right to use them in another promotion. While it’s easy to blur wrestling entities with the people who portray them, they are not one in the same. Entities are owned by corporations.
PWInsider confirmed that Impact sent a fifteen-page cease and desist letter to Ring of Honor before the Hardys debut targeting Matt and Jeff Hardy, and perhaps others, demanding that they immediately stop using the gimmick.
Impact claims that they own the intellectual properties created by Matt and Jeff due to their now-expired contracts and that they are not to use anything related to the Broken gimmick moving forward.
It is not clear exactly how the language in the Hardys’ contract read, but if it did include a statement that any material created by talent under contract is retained by the company, the Hardys simply have no legal claim to bringing the Broken characters with them.
From the outside looking in, this seems unfair. But from a business standpoint, it is anything but uncommon. In fact, it is the exact same kind of language WWE has in place for all of their standard talent contracts.
It is the very reason you don’t see former WWE stars using their WWE gimmicks once they’ve left the company, even though it’s highly likely most of those stars had some creative input into their character’s persona.
For instance, Scott Hall invented the Razor Ramon gimmick based off Tony Montana’s tough talking drug dealer from Scarface. He then brought that character to Vince McMahon to be greenlit for use on WWE television. When Hall and Nash left for WCW, WWE went so far to prove that they were the owners of the Ramon and Diesel gimmicks that they even brought in two other wrestlers to portray them.
It was an awful gimmick, but it did prove a point.
Had Hall not had the WWE platform to use the Razor Ramon gimmick, he would have never gained the success that made him such an attractive free agent in the first place.
It’s no different than if a Saturday Night Live writer/actor created a sketch in which they also starred in and then wanted to go make a movie based on that character without SNL’s involvement.
As for Matt Hardy, he was by all financial standards, no longer as big of a draw before he reinvented himself as the ridiculously compelling Broken one. Even if Reby Sky was correct in her Twitter rant when she said that the Hardys produced all of their segments by themselves, it doesn’t change the fact that the character was still legally created under the TNA banner.
If Matt had known his Broken characters were going to be such a hit, he could have approached Impact before they debuted the gimmick and attempted to rework his contract to give him ownership. Considering he only filed trademark for the name Broken Matt Hardy the day after his Impact contract expired, its highly unlikely he sought this option.
While it may seem that Jeff Jarrett did not want The Hardys to be a part of his new regime in Impact, sources have told us that the new Impact creative team had written their first 6 weeks of television around The Hardys and were forced to rewrite the episodes with only days before filming when the contracts fell through.
What we don’t know is why the contracts fell through. Reby Hardy made her feelings clear that The Hardys felt disrespected, and while the rumored subject of creative control could have been at the center of that conflict, it still does not legally make Impact the bad guys for wanting to retain the rights to the characters created under their umbrella.
It’s unfortunate the relationship between The Hardys and Impact has ended on such a sour note, but most break-ups do.
It’s rumored the Hardys could soon land back in their old WWE stomping grounds. As for Impact, Jeff Jarrett is moving forward with exciting plans for a new era of the company he formed well over a decade ago.
Hopefully, all sides keep creatively pushing wrestling into the future and ultimately no one loses this battle. Most of all, us, the fans.
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