When Impact Wrestling (then called TNA) started experimenting with the Broken Matt Hardy character and pushing the boundaries of what it can do, one of the biggest things to come out of it was "The Final Deletion": a pre-recorded, stylized match between Matt and his brother Jeff taking place all over the sprawling "Hardy Compound." It was a viral smash hit. When WWE tried something similar, Jeff Hardy says he felt "honored."
Jeff, alongside Dean Ambrose, appeared on the “Talk is Jericho” podcast hosted by Chris Jericho and said he was excited seeing WWE trying to mimic The Final Deletion with a pre-taped segment between The Wyatt Family and The New Day when New Day came to “The Wyatt Compound” and fought with the Wyatts.
“I remember being in the hotel watching that and was like ‘wow this is exciting to see how it was with the budget and everything,’” Hardy said. “I was pretty honored in a way.”
The Wyatts’ segment came a week after the now-famous Final Deletion segment aired on TNA television and immediately drew comparisons between one and the other.
TNA then further experimented with similar types of pre-taped segments such as the Delete or Decay match between The Broken Hardys and Decay. They even had a full episode dedicated to the Hardys on December 15 called Total Nonstop Deletion that culminated with the Hardys retaining their TNA World Tag Team Championships in a Tag Team Apocalypto match.
Jeff reconfirmed the story that he and Matt financed all of the segments, save for certain expenses for the Final Deletion segment.
"Yeah for sure [we financed it all]," the former WWE Champion said. "I spent $3,000 building a clay volcano just to dig a hole on top of it. They brought some power and shot nice stuff on it and made a big ole flame out of it. They put a lot of money on it, but other than that, it was all on us. That's what makes Final Deletion so cool because there is no budget."
WWE recently had a match shot in a similar style to how TNA used to do special matches involving the Broken Hardys when Bray Wyatt defeated Randy Orton in a House of Horrors match at the Payback pay-per-view.
You can listen to the full episode at this link.
