Matt and Jeff Hardy helped turn things around for TNA with their "Broken Universe," but the two parties have since been at war over who owns the rights to the gimmick. The brothers claim that since they created the characters, they own them, but the newly rebranded Impact Wrestling claims that their decision to debut their #Broken personas with them means they hold the rights.
While things appear to be ongoing in that respect, it's been claimed that WWE and Impact were working toward an agreement of some sort which would have brought the Broken Universe to WWE and allowed Matt and Jeff to ditch their dated Hardy Boyz gimmick. Well, everyone may have spoken too soon!
Impact Wrestling President Ed Nordholm recently sat down to discuss the dispute and claims he's had no talks with WWE about them bringing #Broken Matt and Jeff Hardy to RAW.
"I think it’s unquestionable that the ownership of the characters in the storyline resides in Impact Wrestling. I don’t think even the Hardys would dispute that. They’ve all signed contracts. Their contracts are standard contracts. Not only in the wrestling industry, but in the entertainment industry, generally, the producer of the show owns the content and it doesn’t really matter who in the creative team came up with the idea of what the character should be. The person that owns the storyline and the character is the person who invested to take that idea and put it on TV. That’s what we did. Impact put those characters on TV, and the contracts with those people are indisputably contracts that provide their IP to Impact.
Oh, of course. I was open to speaking before and I’m open now. We’ve offered many times to find an arrangement with the Hardys that would allow them to continue to use the gimmick within reasonable parameters as to what’s important to us and what would be important to them. I understand with the dynamic of their move to the WWE and drama with which they created that launch – I understand their plan to create maximum “heat” in that period from when they announced to us that they weren’t going to sign the contracts, to the date that they revealed their new location. But I kinda half-expected that once that had been achieved, the thing would die its own natural death because as far as I know, the WWE doesn’t want the gimmick, and indeed, from every conversation I’ve had with them, I’ve been told they have no interest in it."
We are talking about the wrestling business here, so who knows how true that is!
Either way, it seems for now that the Broken Universe won't be colliding with the WWE Universe in the near future. What do you guys think? As always, share your thoughts in the comments section down below.