Impact President Says WWE Has “No Interest” in Broken Hardys Gimmick

Impact Wrestling / Anthem Entertainment president Ed Nordholm was interviewed by Live Audio Wrestling and had a ton of info on the entire Broken Hardys / Impact situation, from his perspective.

– Nordholm claimed that he “unquestionably” has “ownership of the characters and the storyline.”

– He claimed that “We offered many times to find an arrangement with the Hardys that would allow them to continue to use the gimmick within reasonable parameters as to what’s important to us and what would be important to them.”

– He claimed that “WWE doesn’t want the gimmick and indeed from every conversation I’ve had with them as to what they want with it, I’ve been told that they have no interest in it.”

You can watch the interview or read the full transcript below.

Will The Hardys situation come to a resolution?

I don’t believe I have ownership of… I know I have ownership of. I think there is… unquestionably, that the ownership of the characters and the storyline resides in Impact Wrestling. I don’t think even the Hardys would dispute that. They’ve all signed contracts. Their contracts are standard contracts not only in the wrestling industry but in the entertainment industry, the producer of the show owns the content and it doesn’t really matter who in the creative team or character who came up with an idea, what the character should be. The person who owns the storyline and character is the person who invested to take that idea and put it on TV. And that’s what we did. Impact put those on TV, under contracts with those people that are indisputably contracts that provide the IP to Impact. So I don’t think that they genuinely dispute who owns the talent and the gestures and costumes and all of that.

Begs the question about whether there’s independently a reason to allow a character or person to use the gimmick in other venues and in other circumstances and there’s heat about that obviously and hopefully that gets resolved.

Are you open to speaking and sitting down?

Of course. I was open to speaking before and I’m open now. We offered many times to find an arrangement with the Hardys that would allow them to continue to use the gimmick within reasonable parameters as to what’s important to us and what would be important to them. I understand with the dynamic with their move to WWE and the drama with which they created that launch, I understand their plan to create maximum heat in that period when they announced they weren’t going to sign the contracts to the date that they revealed their new location for sure.

It got the heat side of it for wrestling purposes but I kinda half-expected that it would die its own natural death because as far as I know, WWE doesn’t want the gimmick and indeed from every conversation I’ve had with them as to what they want with it, I’ve been told that they have no interest in it.

So they’re not actively pursuing it from you?

Oh God no. I mean, we’ve been in communication because there’s all this chatter about how we’re keeping it away from them. I’m taking heat because I’m keeping something from me. If you want it, why don’t you call me? And their answer to me has been “no, not interested.”

On the Hardys showing up at ROH and receiving a cease-and-desist letter:

Yeah, I don’t really remember the entire sort of sequencing of what was teased and what wasn’t teased and what was out and not out. When Matt decided that he wasn’t going to sign his contract, he told me and I knew what dates were lined up for Ring of Honor because I had been part of negotiating those dates. The whole line we were running in tandem with Ring of Honor was Young Bucks against the Hardys and the Young Bucks were supposed to come to our taping in March that they didn’t show up at. There had been a lot of discussion about what that storyline was gonna run through a couple of months and cooperation with Ring of Honor as to they could our talent on their show, we would use their talent on our show, we would all… the wrestling fan in total would win from this. It wasn’t surprising to me that there were dates set with ROH to allow that interaction between the Hardys and the Young Bucks to play out. Matt confirmed that to me when he told me he wasn’t going to sign the contract.

The issue was whether they’re showing up as the Hardy brothers or are they showing up as Broken Matt and Brother Nero. And we had conversations with the Ring of Honor people before the Manhattan event as to what I was going to be good with and what they were good with and I thought we had an understanding as to where the line was going to be and they communicated to me that they understood our position and would honor it and it became apparent in the day before the PPV event that ROH was putting forward that what was going to happen was going to be the characters, so that gave rise to we did what people that own intellectual property did. You can’t do that. We had an understanding and you’re not living by that understanding.

How would you characterize the relationship now with Ring of Honor?

I think the ROH people would have preferred we hadn’t interfered with that show. I don’t think that they hold any ill will toward me for doing what I did. I’ve had discussions with Joe from time to time and hopefully there’ll be other opportunities for us to be working with ROH much the same way before the Hardy brothers left. They’ve got lots of wrestlers that would be fun to see against our wrestlers and vice versa so hopefully as the heat dies down from all this at some point, we can start working with them in much the same way we intend to work with AAA or NOAH or anybody else.