Jeff Hardy Paid $5000 For Volcano In The Final Deletion
During the latest episode of The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy, the AEW superstar spoke about his time in IMPACT wrestling as Broken Matt Hardy and detailed the behind the scenes aspect of The Final Deletion.
While discussing the cinematic match on The Hardy Boyz compound, Matt revealed that he and Jeff paid for a lot of the expenses during the match and revealed what his brother paid out of his own pocket for the dirt at the ending of the match to create the volcano.
"He paid someone $5000 to bring 10 loads of dirt and he just built the volcano," Matt said. "He did that for the sake of IMPACT Wrestling and Total Nonstop Deletion and Apocalypto. We expensed it to the Hardy bank accounts."
On the previous episode of the podcast, The Hardy Boyz spoke in-depth about the creation of Brother Nero and how the Broken universe first began. Jeff Hardy also spoke about his recent departure from WWE, being asked to join the WWE Hall of Fame as a singles competitor and revealed how upset that made him feel, which led to him turning it down.
Matt Hardy continued to speak about The Final Deletion and gave insight into the reaction backstage in IMPACT at the time once The Final Deletion had aired. He spoke about how so many people didn't know how to react to the match and how many mixed feelings surrounded it.
"It was interesting because they weren't sure how to react at first because it wasn't like anything else they had ever seen in the context of pro wrestling," Matt said. "There were some people that would see it and go 'oh my god, this is brilliance, this is genius,' and there were other people that would say 'um, what is this?'
Current backstage employee of WWE Jeremy Borash was heavily involved in the creation of The Final Deletion, doing the official filming and editing of the match as well. Matt Hardy revealed that after Borash finished the final edit of the match, he waited till the last moment to show both Dixie Carter and Head of IMPACT Creative John Gaburick so they had no choice but to put it on television.
"They waited until the day before to show John Gaburick and it had been ready a little bit before that and they waited until the very final hour," Matt said. "We decided to do it this way they wouldn't be able to say no. They couldn't fill 30 minutes of air time unless they had this so we're going to make sure they didn't have time to shoot anything else. He said whenever he showed it to John Gaburick, head of creative at the time.
"Whenever he watched it he said 'well, I don't know if this is the best thing I've ever seen or the worst thing I've ever seen. I certainly know Vince wouldn't let this fly but we don't have time to replace this, we don't have any time to film anything else to put on television. And you would have to literally be a maniac to put this on TV, so I guess you guys can start calling me a maniac.'
"That was a very famous quote that you guys had to start calling me a maniac to put it on TV. I know Dixie saw it shortly after and I'll never forget two hours before it aired on TV, she said 'oh my god Matt, I am so nervous. What is going to happen? Is this going to be okay?' You have to remember [John Gaburick] comes from Vinces world and Vince wouldn't tolerate any of this."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.