Matt Hardy believes Vince McMahon never understood the Broken gimmick when he tried to bring it to WWE under and different name of Woken during his recent time with the company.
When Matt Hardy returned to WWE alongside his brother Jeff at WrestleMania 33, many wrestling fans thought at the time that the iconic Broken gimmick that had been a huge success on Impact Wrestling and on the independent scene was coming with him.
However, WWE fans were treated to the Woken gimmick instead, a variation of the Broken gimmick, but fans never accepted it as many felt it was similar in name only.
Speaking during a recent appearance on Busted Open Radio, Hardy was asked if the reason why the Woken gimmick wasn’t successful was that Vince McMahon simply didn't understand the Broken character it was based upon.
Hardy replied, via Fightful: "When we did Woken Matt Hardy, Vince initiated it because people wouldn't stop chanting 'Delete.' He'd ask about it, we talked about it, and I wanted to do it. I think there's a possibility of [Vince didn't create it, so he doesn't understand it]. But it's also a different concept.
“I don't think he fully understood it. He gave us an opportunity, but also giving us an opportunity, it allows him to say, 'I gave him an opportunity, but it didn't work huge' It had to be done different.
“When we did the first vignette and we laughed at the very end, we ended up laughing every single week and there are times where there's stuff that has to be serious and it can't be humorous. There's time where it can be dramatic or scary.
“You have to have all those elements to make some kind of odd-meta hack like this work. It ended up getting moved to too much of a 'laugh at each other' to really be brought in correctly by the WWE universe."
The only memorable part of Woken Matt was when he feuded with and eventually teamed up with Bray Wyatt, winning the Raw Tag Team Championship in April 2018.
However, the gimmick was soon dropped after this point, as Hardy suffered a back injury and had to spend some time away from the ring. He and Wyatt were also split up as a result of the injury as well.
Fans will likely see a re-emergence of Broken gimmick in some sort of form now Hardy has left WWE, possibly in AEW since that’s the wrestling promotion he’s been heavily linked with over the past couple of months.