The legal issues between Matt Hardy and his former employers Impact Wrestling has been a saga that has taken up the majority of 2017. Matt has clearly been itching to bring the extremely popular gimmick to WWE while Impact have been adamant that they own the rights to the character and therefore would not let he or WWE do anything with the Broken Universe.

Then just as fans were starting to think we would never see Broken Matt on WWE television, something interesting happened this past week on Raw. Following a loss to Bray Wyatt, Hardy sat in the corner of the ring dejected. He then began to yell delete as Michael Cole questioned whether we were witnessing a break down of the multiple time Tag Team Champion.

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Ever since Matt has once again been embracing the gimmick on Twitter, referring to himself as Woken as opposed to Broken. This change in fortune is pretty sudden, and according to the Squared Circle forum on Reddit, it's basically Impact attempting to cover their tracks. The company have apparently introduced new talent agreements that will allow their employees to continue using their gimmicks even after they have parted ways with the company.

It seems as if The Hardys may have been right all along, and that Impact Wrestling have finally realized that they were fighting a losing battle. Rather than come out and admit that they have instead introduced this new clause that will also apply retroactively to former talents such as Matt Hardy. So even thought Matt already owns the gimmick, Impact doing this makes it appear as if they are in fact letting him use it. Smart, but also pretty transparent.

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Whoever owns or owned the gimmick is now neither here nor there as it is pretty apparent at this point that we're about to see WWE's take on the Broken Universe. Matt Hardy has gone in at the deep end with it too. He may have only shown glimpses of it on Monday night but he has been very much Broken - or Woken - on social media ever since. WWE has a lot to live up to considering the popularity of the gimmick back in TNA, and hopefully they will let Matt pull the strings and also bring back the whole cast that made it so great in the first place.