Matt Hardy's farewell to WWE also left major aftermath in the weeks following the announcement. The former tag team champion has landed at the All Elite Wrestling court, despite the fact that the WWE had offered him an excellent engagement to convince him to renew his contract.
Hardy's eccentric "Broken" gimmick, which he debuted in 2016, earned him multiple awards and praise from wrestling critics, including a second Best Gimmick award (in 2017, the character was renamed "Woken" within WWE). As a singles wrestler, Hardy is a three-time world champion, winning two TNA World Heavyweight Championships and one ECW Championship.
In the latest edition of 'Talk Is Jericho', Hardy revealed how the TV show 'True Blood' inspired his Broken Matt character: “A lot of that came from television shows I watched. I’ll be honest, this is probably the most straight forward honest answer I can give. True Blood was one of the first shows I watched, whenever I had burned out at the end of my WWE run, and then once I started doing some Ring of Honor, and eventually I ended up going back to Impact, and I wasn’t working full time, I discovered television.
I was a big fan of Dexter. True Detective later on became a big love of mine. But True Blood also is a show I enjoyed. And following these vampires who lived in all these different eras and different time periods they were like relative to the era, I was like, I wish I could have a character like that. That’s really what I want to do.”