Over the past year or so, no story in the world of wrestling has been bigger or more talked about than Matt Hardy and his 'Broken Universe'. It started out as this weird art house project then became the most talked about storyline in pro wrestling then it became an intense legal battle.

TNA/Impact/Anthem Sports (they have so many names...its kind of hard to keep up) claimed they owned the 'Broken Matt Hardy' character and all of the 'Broken' Universe. Matt Hardy claimed that everything about the character was personally funded and created by the Hardy brand. Then there was an insanely intense Twitter battle that raged between Matt's wife Reby Sky and then TNA leader Jeff Jarrett. This thing go UGLY!

Well, now it seems that something has dramatically changed. Monday, following a loss to Bray Wyatt, Matt Hardy broke on WWE TV. He was chanting 'DELETE', he had a mental breakdown...it appeared that he was turning back into the form that made him the most talked performer in the world of wrestling. So, what changed?

Following Monday night's events, Sports Illustrated reached out to Anthem/TNA president Ed Nordholm. Ed was asked straight up about the legal battle over the 'Broken Universe', the rights to the character and about intellectual property. After a year long legal battle and a lot of bad blood....Nordholm's answer was sort of shocking:

We have seen the character development and will be interested to see where they take the concept. Our new talent agreements all incorporate language that allow talent to continue to use their IMPACT persona after they leave the company. We are working with our legal team to amend our existing agreements to extend this to all of our current and former talent.

So, there you go. It sounds like Anthem has given up the ghost on trying to steal the intellectual properties their talent creates. So strap in WWE Universe, we're about to go on one hell of a wild ride!

 

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