[Work in progress]
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About
Broken Matt Hardy / “Brother Nero”, also known by the name “The Final Deletion” refers to a series of segments and wrestling matches from TNA broadcasts in the summer of 2016. This storyline features the culmination of the years-long rivalry between the Hardy Boyz, Matt and Jeff Hardy, during which a mentally-broken Matt repeatedly refers to Jeff as “Brother Nero” (Nero being Jeff’s middle name).
Origin
“The Final Deletion” is a notorious 2016 storyline from the American wrestling promotion, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (commonly called TNA), featuring professional wrestlers Matt and Jeff Hardy, who are both storyline and real-life brothers. The angle has gained notoriety for the ambiguous intentionality of its “bad” segments, and has drawn several comparisons to The Room. Some have suggested that Matt is in fact parodying Tommy Wiseau.
The storyline has been divisively received, with some claiming it hurts the art of wrestling and is essentially a shitpost in wrestling form, while others enjoy the nonsensical and over-the-top storyline and credit it with doing a lot to spice up TNA’s creativity and appreciate it with a sense of irony, with many viewers drawing attention to the “So Bad It’s Good” phenomenon. Many viewers’ enjoyment seems to be an example of ironic memeing.
About
The Hardy Boyz (with a Z) rose to prominence in the late 1990s as members of the then World Wrestling Federation’s talent roster. The young wrestling tag team became known for their “extreme” style, high-flying ability and their use of ladders.
Both brothers wrestled primarily for WWF/WWE throughout the 2000s, although Jeff bounced between WWE and TNA on two occasions. Following his departure from WWE in late 2010, Matt joined his brother in TNA as well, although he spent some time from 2012 – 2014 competing for ROH (Ring of Honor) before returning to TNA once more.
“The Final Deletion” Story
In January 2016, a storyline commenced where Matt Hardy cheated to win TNA’s world title. Jeff, who has almost always been a face (a “hero” character in wrestling terms), was dissatisfied with his brother achieving success this way and the two have been feuding ever since. In May, Matt devolved into a new persona, “Broken Matt”, with a new rag-tag look and affecting a bizarre almost-English accent. He continued to target Jeff with both psychological and physical attacks, culminating in the decision to have a match at that year’s special pay-per-view event, Slammiversary.
On the May 31st episode of Impact, a bizarre segment aired wherein Jeff was summoned to Matt’s house in order to sign the match contract. Matt was shown melodramatically playing a piano and even using his wife and infant son to lure Jeff into a trap, and eventually put Jeff through a table before signing the contract. This segment was made available to view on TNA’s YouTube channel on June 1st , and has since acquired 700,000 views. Amusingly and interestingly, the like/dislike ratio sits at roughly 6.9k likes to 6.3k dislikes.
On the July 5th episode of Impact, the main event was an on-location video shot in the style of a B-movie, which featured an unusually theatrical match between the Hardys, at night, in a ring in Matt’s own garden. The match contained highly unlikely and over-the-top spots, such as the brothers shooting fireworks at each other, Jeff performing his signature Swanton Bomb move from a tree branch, and the amusing inclusion of Matt’s gardener during several twists in the match.
Reaction
Reaction was prominent all over sites where wrestling fans congregate, such as Twitter or r/SquaredCircle. Several wrestlers have shown their approval of the reinvention of Matt Hardy’s character. Legendary wrestler Chris Jericho tweeted showing his approval of the 7/5/16 match, and Nick Jackson of the Young Bucks called Hardy “one of the best”.
The storyline has been discussed extensively on Twitter under the hashtag #BrokenMatt. Wrestling news site, Wrestlezone, noted that during the 7/5 airing of Impact, both #TheFinalDeletion and #BrotherNero trended worldwide on Twitter.
TNA themselves appear to be working the “ironic joke” aspect of the angle, even going as far as to tweet a reaction video from another top wrestler of theirs, Drew Galloway. Jeff Hardy changed his Twitter handle to “#BrotherNero DELETED” following his loss to Matt.
Matt has kept up the storyline across his social media accounts, claiming that all who insult or belittle him will be “deleted” just like his brother, working the journalistic reactions to the story into his crazed persona, responding to wrestlers from both TNA and other companies, or even fans, in character as “Broken Matt”.
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Sub-Memes
“Brother Nero, I Knew You’d Come”
This quote is from one of the promotional videos which formed part of the storyline and aired as part of the May 31st 2016 episode of TNA Impact. In it, Jeff enters Matt’s house to find Matt melodramatically playing the piano, before Matt stops, looks up, and delivers the line in magnificently hammy fashion.
Several fans took the clip of Matt playing the piano and added alternative audio to his playing, such as another wrestler’s entrance music, or an anime opening song. The videos typically stop the music and end after Matt says the line, as seen in the compilation video below:
Matt has even started selling a t-shirt featuring the quote, suggesting an awareness of the meme and intention to propagate it.
“It’s a Dilapidated Boat”
A quote from Matt Hardy during the “Final Deletion” match. Having fled from Jeff’s counterattack with fireworks, Matt shouts, “It’s a dilapidated boat!” in exaggerated and unnatural fashion. He then takes cover from Jeff’s rainbow onslaught behind said boat. The line was repeated several times in a Reddit reaction thread, along with other strange quotes from the match – throughout the thread, a wide array of reactions ranging from approval, amusement or even disgust with the angle.
A novelty Twitter account roleplaying as the dilapidated boat was set up on 6th July 2016, which humorously lists its location as “Cameron, NC” (the Hardys’ home town where the Final Deletion match and much of the storyline took place).
Search Interest
References
