More Bad News For The Ultimate Deletion Match

Fans begged for Matt Hardy to take on his Broken persona in WWE when Impact Wrestling wouldn’t let go of it. But since he debuted the Woken Matt Hardy gimmick, it seems to be a little bit less interesting than his previous Broken Hardy incarnation in Impact Wrestling.

It was noted on Wrestling Observer Radio that the key difference could be that Impact Wrestling was “1,000% behind him” while WWE might not be so willing to give up such valuable time on Raw.

Hardy and Bray Wyatt carried on with their feud as much as possible and were even inserted into the 205 Live house shows in an attempt to boost ticket sales. It turns out The Woken One vs The Eater Of Worlds didn’t help the 205 Live house show sell seats to their events and it might not have done much for Raw either.

Wyatt and Hardy’s Great War seemingly concluded in an Ultimate Deletion match at the Hardy Compound complete with comedy, suspense, and a brilliant blend of various film genres. Although some fans were left satisfied with the outcome which could see Bray Wyatt’s character transform, it looks like the majority wasn’t as pleased. Or at least WWE wasn’t happy with it.

Not only did Michael Cole apologize for what we were about to see before the Ultimate Deletion match aired, but the fans in Dallas didn’t even see the match. The entire match was edited off of Hulu and now the ratings for Raw seem to tell a terrible tale.

PW Insider reports Raw brought in 3,327,000 viewers which is slightly down from last week’s 3,352,000. But the real kicker is the fact that they lost 400,000 viewers in the third hour. A third-hour drop is expected but it was actually quite stable last week for some reason (some contributed it to daylight savings time).

This is a real shame because the Ultimate Deletion delivered in many ways and personally, I loved it. It was great to see Reby, Senor Benjamin, Maxel and Wolfgang on television, not to mention Vanguard 1. Jeff Hardy also made a cameo and could have presumably made his return during this match as well which is also excellent.

But still, it was said by Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio that the real test for Hardy’s Ultimate Deletion match will be the ratings. This is not a very good sign for Matt’s vision in WWE although it certainly doesn’t sound like he’s done DELETING people by his recent social media activity where he suggested taking on more opponents in the future including Vince McMahon himself.