Wrestling, for better or worse, is taken incredibly seriously by its audience.

Full disclosure: I, for one, am no exception as I once wrote a column wherein I compared Daniel Bryan’s 2013-14 run to the main event of WrestleMania to Joseph Campbell’s monomyth. I even used the term “ludonarrative dissonance” on purpose.

It is also a profession taken quite seriously both by those working today and those who have been involved with it in the past. That’s why it is not terribly uncommon for heated arguments to arise when someone rears their head up from relative obscurity to point a withering finger at whichever performer or style they think is responsible for killing the business at that particular moment.

Wrestling can be a great vessel for artists to convey stories and express themselves artistically. When it is done right, those stories can resonate on a meaningful level. But above all else, professional wrestling is a form of entertainment, and as a consequence, it should always aspire to entertain its audience.

Sometimes, in order for wrestling to be entertaining, it is important for both the performer and the audience to set aside its preconceptions of the medium’s importance and embrace some of the strange silliness that the format allows.

And embracing the strange is exactly what Broken Matt Hardy and Brother Nero did this past week with The Final Deletion. For its ability to entertain the intended audience, this match is professional wrestling at its very finest.

Granted, every moment of the entire 17-minute-plus presentation is some combination of silly, ridiculous, absurd, and/or insane. But because of its irreverence and its refusal to adhere to so many of the ideas of what wrestling is supposed to be in 2016, it is also a hell of a lot of fun to see unfold.

If the object of any wrestling match is to entertain its audience, then this wonderfully preposterous spectacle was arguably as successful as anything that took place this year at Wrestle Kingdom, WrestleMania, or any NXT TakeOver special — albeit for entirely different reasons.

The Final Deletion is certainly not going to be every wrestling fan’s cup of tea, and it was clear enough in the aftermath that there were those for whom the idea of Matt Hardy sending drones out to attack his brother or Jeff Hardy emerging from dark water suddenly decked out in Willow garb would be a bit too ridiculous to abide.

But wrestling is ultimately about variations on a theme, and niches like lucha libre or catch-as-catch-can or backyard-style hardcore are all valid interpretations. There is something out there for almost everyone if you look hard enough.

The Final Deletion may not represent a new wave for wrestling (and really, that’s for the better, all things considered), but it is as real and defensible an exhibition of its ethos as anything that took place on Raw this week.

There is no greater sin in entertainment than being forgettable. Most of what took place during Raw’s three hours or the other hour and 45 minutes of this week’s Impact has likely already been pushed out of the minds of most viewers. It is fair to say that nobody who saw the Final Deletion will be forgetting it any time soon.

If we were to think of the final three matches at Wrestle Kingdom 10 as a trio of Academy Award contenders and of last month’s Money in the Bank ladder match as a well-made summer blockbuster, then the infamous segment that introduced much of the world to Broken Matt and Brother Nero would be wrestling’s equivalent to The Room, the Final Deletion its Birdemic.

While it’s probably not a stretch to say that both the actual wrestling component of the Final Deletion and the story told in and around the match itself in no way stands up to that of Tanahashi vs. Okada, it is entirely possible to say that you enjoyed both on completely different levels.

It may seem insulting to compare the effort put forth to produce both the original contract signing segment and the match to some of the most unbelievably inept films in history, but the saga of Broken Matt and Brother Nero has one very specific thing in common with films like Plan Nine from Outer Space, Troll 2, and Fateful Findings. They were all made with passion.

It is clear that everyone involved — from Jeremy Borash to the suddenly-celebritized jardinero extraordinario Señor Benjamin — genuinely cared about the end result irrespective of the understanding that what they were working on was completely and utterly ridiculous.

It’s the creator’s commitment to the craft that makes both the Final Deletion and those aforementioned films so entertaining. From Neil Breen to Ed Wood, there is a palpable sincerity in the determination to make the best film possible, and it is the weird mixture of authenticity and ineptitude that shines through wooden acting and bad special effects to make their films so enjoyable.

Tommy Wiseau could never make another film like The Room because he now realizes that his incompetence as a director/screenwriter/actor is his most defining characteristic. Everything that he has put forth in the time since (The Neighbors) has been far too self-aware to be as funny.

This makes it all the more impressive that the Final Deletion managed to be so entertaining even after the Hardys realized what made the contract signing segment work. If anything, this seemed to be a case where the ridiculousness could have even been ramped up just a bit more without coming across as trying too hard to recapture what worked the first time around.

It can be incredibly off-putting to watch something created with the intention of being so bad or off-beat that it is funny. But somehow the Final Deletion feels like something we are supposed to laugh at without ever feeling like it panders for laughs.

With all said and done, the Final Deletion is a work for which many kudos should be handed out. TNA certainly deserves its share for giving the idea a fostering environment — even if it may merely be a circumstance of being desperate for fresh content.

Nonetheless, in an industry where the biggest company on the planet is renowned for its stifling creative atmosphere, seeing a unique idea completely realized is incredibly refreshing.

It seems clear that WWE will try its hand at replicating the charm of this presentation with its Wyatts/New Day feud, but it will be interesting to see if WWE’s heavily-scripted and produced presentation is able to adequately imitate that which it flatters.  

It could also be said that TNA deserves credit for airing this segment amidst a pretty unremarkable episode of Impact. While it may not have been the intended result, contrasting all of the delirious weirdness of the Final Deletion with a largely hum-drum show made it stand out even more.

There may have been better ways to capitalize on the buzz surrounding the match to gain more viewers for the long haul, but the Final Deletion, unfortunately, is not going to be the magic elixir that cures all the ails plaguing the company.

Still, having been likely solely responsible for giving Impact its best rating in more than a year, it is fair to say that it was a risk well worth taking even if the residual effects do not last.  

The biggest praise belongs to Matt Hardy. For as much as this project would have required involved input from Jeff, Reby, and Borash (possibly even Maxel), it seems abundantly clear that this was Matt’s beautiful, twisted brain-child.

It is incredibly admirable to see a man who has been involved in the professional wrestling mainstream for nearly 20 years so boldly reinvent himself this late into his career. When one pays their dues and becomes pigeonholed into a role, it would be incredibly easy to rest on the laurels of the past and become fiercely protective of their image.

Matt Hardy has no such problem and we are all the better for his vision.

In the end, the best approach as a viewer is to divorce yourself from the fact that the entire concept basically confirms that professional wrestling is a work (a fact that, in 2016, should come as a surprise to no one.) 

Separate yourself from what you think wrestling is and has to be. After all, that is exactly what Matt, Jeff, and company did in creating the Final Deletion. It may not be great technical wrestling and it may not be high art, but Matt Hardy fleeing from his Roman Candle-wielding brother, screaming “IT’S A DILAPIDATED BOAT,” and then diving behind said boat for cover will never not be fun.

And fun is exactly what wrestling ought to be.