Matt Hardy Recalls Taking Creative Risk With ‘Broken’ Persona, Decision To Use ‘Delete’ Catchphrase

As noted, Matt Hardy is doing a five-part series on his “broken” persona on his Extreme Life of Matt Hardy podcast. In a recent episode, he discussed coming up with his “broken” persona, his decision to use the “delete” catchphrase, and much more. Here’s what he had to say (via Fightful):

Matt Hardy on coming up with his “broken” persona and taking creative risks in wrestling: “You have to be not afraid to take that risk of doing something crazy, you can’t be afraid to think out of the box, you have to try different things. I always feel like because we kind of control our destiny, because it’s pro wrestling. I think you can always bring people back even if you do something and like, piss them off that they don’t like or whatever, I think you can turn around and bring people back. Still, you might lose a certain status that people might look at you from. But I think being not afraid to take a risk on a creative level like that is so important in pro wrestling in this day and age.”

On his decision to use the “delete” catchphrase: “Literally, I started using it because it was a word that was current and modern, that I think we were still saying, you know, like delete your account or whatever that point. I utilized it because it was like a cool kind of half-assed hit word,” said Matt. “It was something that had never been used before. But then I started hearing like, all these Death Note things and Cybermen [from Doctor Who] or whatever, I didn’t get the ‘DELETE’ concept from anywhere else, with the exception of probably Googling, ‘destroy’ or ‘annihilate’ or whatever synonyms you know, and probably that’s where delete would have originated from because it was kind of like a hip word at the time.”

On his Brother Nero comment getting over with fans: “It happened accidentally. I mean, I obviously meant to say it, but I didn’t realize it was going to get over the way it did, and it’s crazy how that became like a big meme. People were making different versions of that music. I mean, it was crazy how viral that that went in. Obviously, we know when so many people were hitting that, ‘Brother Nero. I knew you’d come,’ we had something to work with. So that was something I was going to always highlight and try and emphasize whenever we’re doing it.”