TNA Wrestling announced today that the first-ever Wicked Garden Match is set for Friday, May 15, at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium. The Wicked Garden Match will air on June 4 on AMC in the US, on Thursday Night iMPACT. After a title match at TNA Genesis 2026, The Hardys challenge rivals The Righteous in a mysterious Righteous-inspired match. The company executives predict it will be one of the most unique and painful matches in TNA Wrestling history, complete with an eerie ritualistic look and feel, as The Righteous thrive on.
Driven by darkness and a psychotic mix, the Wicked Garden Match will feel like an immersive wrestling match, bleeding through in-ring coloring, a first-ever green ring canvas, and evil flowers surrounded by vicious, dangerous vines. The Righteous (Vincent and Dutch) have extended an invitation to The Hardys (Jeff and Matt) to enter The Wicked Garden for a match shrouded in mystery, but, given the twisted minds of The Righteous, fans can expect something unsettling and unprecedented.
TNA Wrestling returns to Sacramento, California, for back-to-back nights of action-packed, high-energy pro wrestling on Thursday and Friday, May 14-15. The May 14 show is Thursday Night iMPACT, airing LIVE on AMC in the U.S. The May 15 event will be taped for future episodes of Thursday Night iMPACT. For tickets to the TNA shows in Sacramento, go to: www.tnawrestling.com.
A TNA Wrestling history of unique and barbaric matches
The company has always been innovative in its very unique way when it comes to dangerous and bloody matches. For 24 years, they have reinvented hardcore wrestling, with matches like Raven’s Clockwork Orange House of Fun, Doomsday Chamber of Blood, Full Metal Mayhem, or Lethal Lockdown (the match will return on August 23 at TNA Lockdown). Some have become really iconic over the years.
The Barbed Wire Massacre: The ropes are replaced with razor-sharp barbed wire, as are the weapons and some parts of the arena. The barbed wire can be used against an opponent in any way to secure a victory. Abyss and Sabu battled in the first Barbed Wire Massacre, with Abyss still having scars to this very day. It happened only 6 times in TNA history, with Sami Callihan being involved 4 times.
The Ultimate X/ Elevation X: Four 20-foot high steel girders are placed at the corners of the six-sided ring. Steel cables are attached to the top of each girder, criss-crossing 15 feet above the center of the ring, forming a giant X. The first star to climb the steel girders, maneuver the cables, and return to the ring mat with the title is declared the winner. Elevation X was a variant of Ultimate X with a large, 20-foot high scaffold, in the shape of an “X”, over the ring. The match ends when one man throws his opponent off the structure to the ring far below.
The Monster’s Ball is the most brutal of all TNA’s matches. This match is the specialty of hardcore, where there are No Disqualifications and no countouts as Falls Count Anywhere. In this match, weapons are not only allowed, but they’re also encouraged. Common weapons found in this match are thumbtacks, barbed wire, tables, chairs, ladders, and chains.
TNA Wrestling has been a haven of hardcore wrestling. When ECW closed its doors in 2001, fans of that style of wrestling lost a company and some iconic shows that allowed them to witness the brutality of hardcore wrestling. A year later, they found a new place to enjoy it with TNA. At the crossroads of WCW’s Cruiserweight wrestling and ECW’s hardcore wrestling, the company created a unique universe where men like women could defy the laws of pro-wrestling.
The Righteous wanted to push the Hardys to their limits (TNA Wrestling)
The Hardys’ Special Moments in TNA Wrestling
Last Halloween, Brother Nero and Broken Matt brought us back into the history of their Broken universe. The Righteous wanted to revive them, and they succeeded in bringing them back to a ring. Since 2016, Matt and Jeff Hardy have invoked their “Broken” counterparts to “delete” their opponents. The Hardys’ compound turned into a field of war multiple times.
Before joining forces, Broken Matt and Brother Nero battled each other in The Final Deletion, the cataclysmic conclusion to the Hardy vs. Hardy feud. Broken Matt defeated Brother Jeff in the match to become the sole owner of the Hardy brand, forcing Jeff to drop his last name and be referred to as “Brother Nero.” To quote Jeff Hardy, “A mind blown, a Swanton Bomb out of a tree, out in nature, Mother Nature, Mother Earth, Willow coming out of the lake, reincarnation, a burning cross, and a Swanton from the burning cross. I didn’t think it could get much better.”
Broken Matt Hardy surprising Vincent (TNA Wrestling)
The Hardys faced Decay in a “Final Deletion/Delete or Decay” match held at the Hardy compound, where Brother Nero sacrificed himself to save Matt from Abyss. Thanks to Brother Nero’s sacrifice, Hardy was able to confront Rosemary and prevent his son Maxel from being abducted. Hardy turned babyface as a result. He furthered the face turn by healing Brother Nero in the Lake of Reincarnation.
From these visual experiences, we called matches, a full iMPACT episode emerged from the Hardys’ compound, Total Nonstop Deletion. Five matches happened in the barn of the compound, including a Tag Team Apocalypto involving the Hardys and 10 other teams. “The volcano was completely real. Anything goes in the imagination and in the Broken universe; anything can happen, and that volcano did exactly what it was supposed to do that night,” says Jeff Hardy. When the Hardys returned to TNA Wrestling in 2024, The System invaded the compound, and later, Nic and Ryan Nemeth.
When the creativity of Matt Hardy and the uniqueness of TNA Wrestling joined forces in 2016, the company became the centre of attention again. Matt Hardy’s creative nature allowed him to experiment with a character’s style that most wrestlers would fear. The feud between Matt and Jeff created the Broken Universe, with Matt’s vision coming to life. Matt’s wife, kids, and father-in-law appeared in the various cinematic matches and segments.
The Hardy Boyz’s career has always been synonymous with tables, ladders, chairs, insane spots, and broken bodies. The Broken Hardys’ era has always embodied a kind of unpredictability. Everything can happen everywhere, and everyone can appear. Matt Hardy explained that he was influenced by the show “True Blood” and the concept that vampires can live for thousands of years, allowing us to see them throughout different periods. He also pulled ideas from other shows like “Dexter,” while detailing how he wanted to be more creative in the ring as he got older, “What if I try to be more theatrical and more performative?”
As we witnessed with the Boneyard match at WrestleMania 36, the less you know about a stipulation, the crazier, the more brutalistic, and the more surprising it can be. In a place like TNA Wrestling, where everything becomes possible, Broken Matt and Brother Nero have the perfect “Broken” space to tell us a lot of crazy stories in a lot of insane bouts. I Nygma-see you in the Wicked Garden…
Broken Matt Hardy and Brother Nero (TNA Wrestling)
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