Matt Hardy Says The Final Deletion Changed The Entire Direction Of TNA

On the latest episode of Extreme Life Of Matt Hardy, the TNA star talked about the tenth anniversary of the Final Deletion, explaining how the cinematic match and the Broken Universe reset TNA — and detailing the big plans that were in place before he and Jeff left. You can check out his comments below:

On the match’s impact:

“It really was. The direction of the entire company changed once the Broken Universe stuff took off. It was geared more in that direction artistically, especially once Anthem bought the company and Jeff Jarrett came back. There were still big plans. We talk about it on Dark Side of the Ring, which is getting ready to debut in a week. We had talked with Jeff Jarrett, we had a handshake agreement with Anthem, we were going to stay, and then Jeff was going to pull our money back some, and Jeff had already made plans. There was all this stuff he’d laid out for the Broken Universe. I was going to keep evolving and changing the character so it stayed fresh, and the Broken Universe was going to be a huge deal, because we were also going to do a cross-commercial angle against the Young Bucks, since ROH and TNA were kind of on board to work together again. Who knows where it would have gone, but it really did reset TNA in many, many ways.”

On getting it on TV:

“Even after we shot all that, I’ll never forget, Jeremy Borash was very slick with it. He had edited the stuff together, and John Gaburick was the guy in charge of talent relations and TV, right underneath Dixie. JB said, I’m going to give it to him last-second, so they have to put it on TV — there’s not going to be anything else to fill that spot, I’m not going to give them time to pull something to replace it. So even though he’d edited it and we’d seen it a couple of days before, he waited right until the deadline. I’ll never forget, John Gaburick sent us both a text and said, I’ll be honest, I’ve watched this, it’s crazy. There’s fire, there’s drowning people, people are changing in lakes, all this insanity, fireworks. He said, you’d have to be a madman to put this on TV, so I guess you guys can call me Mad Matt from here on out. And I remember Dixie texting, saying, ” Oh my god, I’m so scared, what are people going to think? This is wild, I’m so nervous. And obviously it was a smashing success.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Extreme Life Of Matt Hardy with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.