Real Reason Why Referee’s Face Was Blurred During Broken Hardys Match In Tijuana

The Broken Hardys continued their Expedition of Gold last week as they appeared at Konnan’s The Crash Lucha Libre promotion in Tijuana where they captured the Mexican Tag Team Championship. Their match was featured on Impact, but there was one glaring edit made during the match: the referee’s face was blurred out.

The latest issue of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter explained the real reason why the referee’s face received a post-production edit.

In reality, the mystery referee’s identity wasn’t what Broken Matt jokingly claimed to be in recent social media posts. The referee, real name Marty Elias also works for Lucha Underground.

When LU found out that they would be using the referee in this televised match, they sent legal action letters to Impact Wrestling, The Crash, and Pop TV. They didn’t seem to mind when legal letters were sent to Impact because Impact Wrestling reportedly receives these kinds of letters often. But, when a letter was sent to Pop TV the edit had to be made.

It was noted that at the time the legal letters were sent, AAA were actively trying to start a relationship with Impact Wrestling to keep them from working with The Crash. Impact Wrestling was reportedly upset at AAA (who partly owns Lucha Underground) because one minute they’re trying to work out a deal, and the next they were threatening to sue them.

Dave Meltzer notes that this is the first time in his recollection that a referee has had to have his face edited out of a professional wrestling show. Meltzer also noted that Konnan and Impact Wrestling were being super careful not to feature any Lucha Underground talents, but they simply forgot about the referee.

Lucha Underground would have been in the right and had precedent to take legal action against The Crash and Impact Wrestling if they had shown the referee during the show.

Therefore, it was a history-making face edit.