Impact’s Ed Nordholm: WWE has ‘no interest’ in Broken Hardys gimmick

The legal situation surrounding the ownership of the “Broken Hardys” characters inevitably came up when Ed Nordholm (president of Impact Wrestling and Executive VP of Anthem Sports & Entertainment) sat down with John Pollock for an interview that aired on this week’s episode of Live Audio Wrestling.

Just as inevitably, Nordholm spoke definitively about the characters belonging to Impact Wrestling.

“I think it’s unquestionable that the ownership of the characters in the storyline resides in Impact Wrestling,” Nordholm said. “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, generally, the producer of the show owns the content and it doesn’t really matter who in the creative team came up with the idea of what the character should be.”

“The person that owns the storyline and the character is the person who invested to take that idea and put it on TV. That’s what we did. Impact put those characters on TV, and the contracts with those people are indisputably contracts that provide their IP to Impact.”

It didn’t take long for Reby Hardy to respond to Nordholm’s comments after the interview had gained attention. She wrote on Twitter that Nordholm was: “Taking advantage that fans do not know details of contracts, which were NOT ‘standard entertainment contracts’ & not drafted under Anthem.”

Nordholm also had interesting comments regarding whether WWE is even interested in the “Broken Hardys” gimmick. He claimed that he’d be open to speaking with The Hardys and that they’ve been offered the opportunity to find an arrangement that would work for both parties, but said that he doesn’t believe WWE is interested in their “Broken” characters.

“As far as I know, the WWE doesn’t want the gimmick, and indeed, from every conversation I’ve had with them, I’ve been told they have no interest in it,” Nordholm said.

Reby Hardy responded to that as well: “Only thing apparent here is the level of desperation from a person of his position doing a phone podcast re: intentions of a billion $+ co.”

Below is the video clip where Nordholm discusses the legal situation: