How Matt Hardy is responsible for the WrestleMania 36 'Boneyard match' between The Undertaker and AJ Styles (Opinion)
Before WrestleMania 36, everyone was clueless as to what a 'Boneyard match' was. It seemed like a bizarre stipulation match, but it resulted in The Undertaker having his best match in seven years against AJ Styles.
The last time he had a match this good was against CM Punk at WrestleMania 29 and as we know, the following years saw his overall health drop and the quality of his matches as well. In the eyes of many, The Undertaker should have retired a long time ago.
He supposedly retired at WrestleMania 33, only to return a year later. However, his change in gimmick has led to a resurgence of sorts and the fact that he's in phenomenal physical shape only helped him.
The 'Boneyard match' turned out to be a masterclass in psychology and storytelling, but the more fascinating aspect of it was the cinematography. But how exactly does Matt Hardy relate to the WrestleMania 36 main event, especially since it's been over a month that his contract expired?
Matt Hardy changed the game in 2016 when he was with Impact Wrestling and he was the most unique character in the entire industry, becoming the more popular of the two Hardy brothers with his "Broken" gimmick. On July 5th, 2016, Hardy, along with Jeremy Borash (now a WWE employee), changed the game forever with his match against Jeff Hardy in The Hardy Compound. It was called "The Final Deletion" and it featured wrestling shot cinematically, instantly creating hype and giving Impact Wrestling the most attention they had in years.
In 2016, The New Day and The Wyatt family had a similar "cinematic-style" match which was heavily criticized as many felt it was a shot at Impact Wrestling. However, the truth is that the style of filming in The Final Deletion was unique to its time and caught WWE's eye. While these kinds of matches mustn't remain frequent, it's clear that WWE has fully tapped into the cinematic style of shooting.
The Undertaker vs AJ Styles was a huge success and will encourage WWE to try more cinematic-style matches moving forward. We wouldn't have seen it this way had it not been in the Performance Center, but the match accomplished the goal of getting The Undertaker's gimmick change over.
It's crazy to think of the indirect or direct impact that Matt Hardy (and Jeremy Borash) caused to the main event of Night 1 of WrestleMania 36.