Posted in: Movies, Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: impact wrestling, jeff jarrett, matt hardy, reby hardy, tna wrestling, wrasslin, wrestling, wwe

Reby Hardy And Jeff Jarrett Continue Twitter Battle Over Broken Matt Hardy Character

When Matt and Jeff Hardy left Impact Wrestling (formerly known as TNA) back in February, it kicked off a feud over the rights to the Broken gimmick which was one of the bright spots of an otherwise miserable 2016 for the company, which barely survived a corporate takeover by Smashing Pumpkins vocalist Billy Corgan and eventually ended in a takeover by Anthem Sports & Entertainment. For the most part, that feud has played out via epic Twitter rants from Matt Hardy's wife, Reby Hardy, feuding with TNA officials like Ed Norholm, Dutch Mantell, and Jeff Jarrett.

In our last update, Nordholm leaked parts of what he claimed was Matt Hardy's contract, as well as transcripts of email conversations with WWE about the gimmick. The Hardys are unable to use the gimmick in WWE until the legal question of its ownership is settled, with Impact claiming it belongs to them because it was created while the Hardys were working there. The Hardys, however, claim they came up with on their own, funded TV tapings to produce the segments, and involved relatives who were not under contract to TNA, such as Reby Hardy's father-in-law Senor Benjamin and son, King Maxel. In addition, the Hardys have argued that their contract did not give TNA control of their creation.

Today, Jeff Jarrett reignited hostilities when he spoke about the situation with website Wrestle:List, saying:

I always take the high road because there is legal squabbles or potential legal squabbles but I have said this to a couple of outlets, and I say this with very broad strokes – I am from Nashville so I am around music which is intellectual property and I have been in the business 30 years. Intellectual property laws are very simple, there are two sides to it; there are publishers and the writers, then there are the performers as well. Jeff Hardy has been one of my best friends for 20 years, you can look on my social media and their social media, and we take family vacations together but business is business. So when it relates to IP it's real simple, there is a publisher who owns the property, there is a writer who gets credit and can monetize it, then there is the performers. There is no question that Broken Matt and Brother Nero's performances were off the charts good. But when it comes to ownership to me its almost a silly squabble, it's never been in question. Impact are the owners.

Like clockwork, Reby Hardy took to Twitter to respond, coming right out of the gate with a threat to alleged legal troubles in Jarrett's past:

Former WWE Superstar Hurricane Helms, who recently departed Impact Wrestling himself, even joined the fun:

Prompting Hardy to respond:

Shortly after, Hardy made good on her threat to post Jarrett's arrest records:

And she promised to release more soon:

It's likely to be a longtime before we get the blowoff match to this feud, but at this point, the highly entertaining social media battles over the Broken gimmick are almost as prolific as the gimmick itself. The question is: who owns the rights to this one?

Maybe we'll file a trademark.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!