Drawing inspiration from the likes of “The Icon” Sting and the Ultimate Warrior, Jeff Hardy is widely known for his colorful and often abstract face paint. During this week’s TNA Impact broadcast, many wrestling fans pointed out the similarities between Jeff’s new face paint design and the signature mask worn during Bray Wyatt’s run as The Fiend in WWE. Matt Hardy later confirmed on his podcast, “The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy,” that the late WWE star was the inspiration for his brother’s latest face paint.

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“Yeah, it was 100% inspired by the Fiend mask,” Matt said. “Jeff looked and said, ‘Hey, do you think this would be cool if I did it as some kind of tribute?’ I said, ‘Yeah, man, it would be great and I think it would be very cool for your face paint.’ He’s done some stuff that was very skeletal as we were getting closer to Halloween season and stuff. He said, ‘I want to try to pull this off.’ It was identical to the image he had used for his face paint. He paints everything himself, as you know. It was absolutely identical. It was unbelievably awesome. It was so cool.”

From late 2017 to July 2018, Matt and Wyatt were involved in WWE programming as both opponents and tag team partners. As a duo known as The Deleters of Worlds, Wyatt and Matt enjoyed a reign as WWE Raw Tag Team Champions. The same cannot be said for Jeff Hardy, however, as he was sidelined by injury and then returned with a United States Championship win.

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“Jeff really wishes he had gotten the chance to interact (with Bray),” Matt said. “He really would have loved to do ‘Broken’ Matt, Bray Wyatt-Fiend and (his alter ego) Willow.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please cite the source “The Extreme Life of Matt Hardy” with ah/t to Wrestling Inc. for transcription.