Revisiting some of the best gimmicks of Matt Hardy on his birthday

Matt Hardy is considered to be one of the modern-day all-time greats in professional wrestling. He has enjoyed variable degrees of success in WWE where he has won the tag-team titles on multiple occasions mostly as one-half of The Hardy Boyz along with his younger brother Jeff Hardy, the United States Championship on one occasion, and the ECW World Heavyweight Championship. He has also won the Impact World Championship two times during his tenure at Impact Wrestling.

In a career that spans over 30 years, Matthew Moore Hardy has managed to keep himself relevant in the business through the use of various interesting and eccentric gimmicks. Matt Hardy was born on September 23, 1974, and today on his 45th birthday, we look back at some of the best gimmicks that he has portrayed on live television.

#1 Version 1

At the start of 2002 when WWE was going through its Ruthless Aggression phase, The Hardy Boyz disbanded and Jeff Hardy was drafted to RAW while Matt was relegated to Heat. On the August 12 episode of RAW, Matt turned on his brother Jeff by attacking him during The Charismatic Enigma's match against Intercontinental champion Rob Van Dam. The reason he did this was because he was aggravated by the fact that he was not getting a No.1 contenders match against Van Dam.

A few days later when Matt was drafted to SmackDown, he dubbed himself Matt Hardy: Version 1 and created a 'V1' hand signal using his index, middle, and little fingers. V1 Matt Hardy infamously won two matches against The Undertaker at this point of time although he had Brock Lesnar to thank for causing outside interferences. He developed a cult of his own which he named "Mattitude" and participated in some interesting storylines for the Cruiserweight Championship.

He would later win the title from Billy Kidman at No Way Out 2003 and go on to have a reign of 102 days as the champion before finally dropping it to Rey Mysterio. The gimmick was so popular that he received the Best Gimmick award from Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

#2 Broken

This is the gimmick that brought Matt Hardy widespread attention and critical acclaim during his second stint at Impact Wrestling and helped him in reviving his career. Matt Hardy was feuding with his brother Jeff Hardy at the beginning of 2016 and participated in an I Quit match on the April 19, 2016 episode of Impact.

The match ended in a no-contest as both brothers were severely injured and Matt was rushed to the hospital. Matt Hardy then started playing mind games on Jeff by conducting a series of attacks on him as an impostor Willow (one of Jeff Hardy's persona in Impact Wrestling) and on the May 17 episode, revealed himself to be the one behind the attacks.

In the weeks that followed, Matt started using a new "Broken" persona where he portrayed himself as a disheveled man with a deteriorating mental condition. He colored part of his hair bleach blonde and spoke in a peculiar, yet sophisticated accent and started referring his brother Jeff as "Brother Nero" and blamed him for all of his misfortunes and became obsessed with "deleting" him. He challenged Jeff to a match at their home in Cameron, North Carolina dubbed The Hardy Compound where he put their Hardy brand on the line. Broken Matt came out as the victor in the match and became the sole owner of the Hardy brand and forced Jeff to drop his last name and become referred to as Brother Nero.

This gimmick earned Matt a second Best Gimmick award.

#3 Woken

After Matt left Impact Wrestling, he along with his brother Jeff returned to WWE at WrestleMania 33 on April 2 where they took part in the RAW Tag Team Championship match and eventually came out as the winners. After losing the belts a few months later and with Jeff getting sidelined with injury, Matt began wrestling in singles matches and started using the "Broken" gimmick. In his subsequent feud with Bray Wyatt, Matt introduced the gimmick as "Woken" and continued with the same antics that he used to do in his Broken gimmick.

After defeating Bray Wyatt at the Hardy Compound in an episode of Raw dubbed The Ultimate Deletion, Hardy resolved his feud with him and the two became tag-team partners who went on to win the RAW Tag Team Championships which they then lost to The Revival.

Following this, Matt took some time off to recuperate from injuries and after being absent from TV for several months, Hardy returned with his brother Jeff on SmackDown Live and would later win the SmackDown tag -team champions from The Usos. The reign lasted a mere 21 days as they had to relinquish the title as Jeff became seriously injured.

Matt Hardy is currently off television programming but he has been teasing a new gimmick on his social media platforms in short video packages dubbed as "You Don't Understand" where Matt complains about things in his life which are unbearable to him, however petty they might be in a whiny voice. Usually, he concludes each video with a wide grin on his face. He even posted a video on his birthday: