Trivia / Jeff Hardy

• Breakup Breakout: With Jeff being the Michaels and Matt being the Jannetty. Early on it seemed Matt would be the Michaels due to his immensely popular Version 1 character while Jeff got fired. Then the whole Matt/Lita/Edge debacle happened which completely derailed his career, while Jeff was rehired and ultimately redeemed himself long enough to win a World Title. Matt became more popular again with the whole Broken!Universe Career Resurrection but circumstances that were not entirely in Matt's control prevented the gimmick from reaching its full potential.
• Dye Hard: By now it's easier to just count the colors he hasn't dyed his hair.
• Fake Nationality: American, billed from Australia during their short-lived Jynx Brothers gimmick in WWE in 1995.
• Hostility on the Set: He shut out Edge for several months after learning Edge had been seeing his brother Matt's girlfriend Lita behind all their backs. Eventually, they managed to overcome it and become friends again.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • Despite his massive Popularity Power, WWE never allowed Jeff to have an extended world title reign because of his well-known drug problems. Freddie Prinze Jr. noted that some officials were reluctant to let Jeff even win a world title at all because of that. Considering what Jeff would get up to after his second release from WWE, their fears were justified.
  • TNA learned the same lesson after Victory Road. The only reason Jeff won their world title again back in 2012 was because his contract was running out and they were doing everything in their power to make sure he stayed with them instead of re-signing with WWE.
• Real Song Theme Tune: During the last years of his first WWE run, he used EndeverafteR's "No More Words".
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Jeff has been let go from both WWE and TNA more than once due to bad behaviour on his part.
  • He was let go by WWE in 2003 due in part to drug problems, after which he went to TNA. He was there for the next two years before being let go for drug issues and no-showing events and then returning to WWE.
  • Then, in 2010, he resurfaced in TNA again after taking the second half of 2009 off to allow his body to heal after his WWE contract expired. Then came the infamous Victory Road match. And he disappeared for four months, with many thinking by this time that TNA would just give up on him and not elect to bring him back. He did come back, and stayed there until early 2017, when they left TNA (now rebranded to Impact) for legal reasons.
  • In 2021, he was fired from WWE thanks to odd behavior at a house show, which the company assumed was him relapsing again. They made him do a drug test, but before the results came in, issued him an ultimatum of rehab. Then it turned out the drug test tested negative and he hadn't relapsed at all — apparently Jeff had finally gotten fed up with the company's treatment of him and this was his way of saying Take This Job and Shove It. The company tried to convince him to come back ^note Even offering a place in the Hall of Fame, which Jeff was offended by because he felt Matt and him deserved to go in together as the Hardy Boyz first, but he refused and eventually resurfaced in All Elite Wrestling in March 2022.
  • Then it later turned out he actually had relapsed again, after he got arrested for another DUI a few months after his AEW debut. This time it hit the mainstream news, especially when a video of the arrest was posted online by TMZ and more details of the situation came to light: namely, that Jeff was driving with a suspended license, was driving a vehicle without the interlock device he was court-ordered to have, and had blown a 0.294 and 0.291 during the breathalyzer test, which was more than three times the legal limit of Florida, the state he was driving in. Coming off the heels of his already controversial firing from WWE, AEW had no choice but to throw the book at him — the day after the news broke, he was suspended without pay, given rehab as an ultimatum again, and told that they weren't keeping him unless he kept clean after he was finished with treatment. Of course, this is assuming he avoids jail time, as his 3rd DUI in 10 years counts as a Felony rather than a Misdemeanour.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Before he got hit with a Wellness Policy Violation, Jeff was set to win the Money in the Bank Ladder match at WrestleMania 24. The violation meant he had to miss out at 'Mania, so the briefcase went to CM Punk instead — which helped set the foundation to Punk's eventual rise to superstardom years later.
  • According to some, TNA had no intention of actually putting Jeff out there at Victory Road; they apparently found him backstage strung out after previously seeing him look perfectly fine arriving to the show. They played his music for Bischoff to walk out and say that Jeff was not there and that there would be a impromptu match for Sting, but while he was lying down at gorilla awaiting medical attention, Jeff apparently just sat up upon hearing his music play and managed to stumble out through the entrance ramp before anyone noticed, and they then couldn't stop him so Bischoff improvised telling Sting to just pin him.
  • There's been a long-standing rumor that WWE had originally intended to re-sign Jeff in 2010 after his body healed up and continue his now-legendary feud with CM Punk, which is only supported by Punk dissing Jeff numerous times on SmackDown! even after he was gone (such as openly acknowledging Jeff's drug arrest and stomping on a Jeff Hardy DVD the company released). Instead, Jeff ended up signing with TNA and Punk ultimately defaulted to a feud with Rey Mysterio. Similarly, it's been said that WWE was interested in bringing Jeff back in 2012 once his contract with TNA expired (not-so-coincidentally, this was in the middle of Punk's 434-day WWE Championship reign and close to the point where he made a Face–Heel Turn), which caused TNA to do everything in their power to make sure he re-signed, including making him TNA World Champion again and allowing him to use his personal belt, the same one he used while he was a member of Immortal. It wasn't until over a decade after the feud's end that they were even in the same company together, after Jeff signed with AEW, and any hopes of possibly reigniting it again went down drastically after Punk went down with an injury three days into his AEW World Championship reign, followed by Jeff getting slammed with a DUI only a few days later and jeopardizing his own position with the company.
  • Before Jeff got slammed with his June 2022 DUI arrest, the Hardy Boyz were set to win the AEW World Tag Team Championships during a triple threat ladder match with the Jurassic Express and The Young Bucks. They were also set to make an appearance at the second night of Triplemanía XXX, wrestling a match against Los Hermanos Lee, but the arrest caused AAA to remove Jeff from the event and necessitating Matt to get a replacement partner, who ended up being John Morrison (or "Johnny Hardy", as he was calling himself for that match).

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