YMMV / Jeff Hardy

• Ass Pull: Jeff's Face–Heel Turn in TNA. The only Face–Heel Turn of Jeff's career, in fact, done with no foreshadowing and on a wrestler that everyone likes, even the smarks. While his video promos and the nasty treacherous in-ring style he developed afterwards were credited with getting him heat even if half the crowd still cheers him, that still doesn't obscure the fact that it came out of nowhere.
• Awesome Music: His solo entrance theme from towards the end of his first WWE run, "No More Words" by Endeverafter. Jeff agreed too, to the point that it was reported that he actually made it part of his contract negotiations with WWE during his second run to get back the theme (he had reverted back to the Hardy Boyz theme). He finally got to use it back starting from the July 19, 2021 episode of Raw, more than 13 years after its debut.
• Broken Base: For as legendary as a career Jeff Hardy has, it's not without some debated topics.
  • His main event status combined with his known drug usage. He's a hot debate source for Smarks.
  • His 2021 release from WWE. Jeff Hardy essentially admitted going into business for himself, by leaving a match during a house show and acting weird, to get out of his WWE contract so that he may leave. Some figured WWE was owed no good will because of their actions during the pandemic era and that Jeff's unhappiness is what matters. Some feel that Jeff Hardy was extremely selfish as anyone doing this is marked for unprofessionalism, and what he did was essentially that.
• Draco in Leather Pants: For all the complaints you will see online about Jeff Hardy, both regarding his in ring career and offset legal troubles, he has little trouble getting cheered for in most venues. Even his harshest detractors have to relent that he is one of the greatest baby faces of all time.
• Estrogen Brigade: He's wildly popular with teenage girls (and women in general).
• Sexy Villains, Chaste Heroes: Maybe its the aggressiveness, or maybe it's just the black, but he looked really, really good as a heel.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Meth Hardy, for his well-known drug problems.
  • His redesign of the TNA World Heavyweight Title is the Aztec Sun belt.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: His self designed version of the TNA World Heavyweight Title Belt, which is his own asymmetrically painted silver face on a purple strap.
• Foe Yay Shipping: With CM Punk, which led to the rise of the Junk pairing that retains a minor following to this day. Their entire feud reads as Punk being intensely attracted to Jeff and hating him for it, and Jeff reluctantly being attracted to Punk in turn but still despising him for all his heinous actions.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • "Congratulations, brother!" - said from Hulk Hogan to him in presence of Ric Flair in a 2002 segment. Several years later, the three would fall in disgrace: Jeff and his drug problem, Hogan being banned from the WWE after the Gawker fiasco, and Flair's lifestyle problems. And then there's Immortal and its effect on TNA.
  • His iconic feud with CM Punk became this after Jeff's addiction problems became more prominent as the years passed by. For all that Punk was the heel in this feud, he was right about Jeff and his issues, something that more than one fan has come to sadly note over the years.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: After his famous Ladder Match with the Undertaker, he boasts that the Deadman hasn't broken him yet. More than a decade later, his brother would break him.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Hooo, boy...just go online and find that he's been shipped with everyone male and female alike.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • His drunken Take That! rant on CM Punk seen here.
  • "THAT'S MAH PAINTING MAAAAN!" from when Johnny Nitro knocked down a painting he was working on.
  • "Austin, my nuts hurt."
  • "I'LL FADE AWAY AND CLASSIFY MYSELF AS OBSOLETE!"
• Never Live It Down
  • The Victory Road 2011 main event match. The only way he will live it down is if it's generally attributed to TNA's overall incompetence and not just Hardy, but knowing Jeff's lifestyle this is unlikely.
    • Despite winning back the crowd with his redemption story, he's still never gonna fully live it down—not only does his record keeps him from being able to attend overseas tours, but his checkered past (both real and storyline, the latter being pretty rare) can easily be used as a plot point against his character as Magnus did expertly at Impact: Final Resolution 2013.
  • Among Japanese fans, it was Jeff Hardy defending TNA World Heavyweight title against Tetsuya Naito at the 2011 Wrestle Kingdom while high. Considering that it took place shortly before the Victory Road fiasco, many see it as real-life Foreshadowing.
  • While he didn't exactly "live it down", Jeff's Epic Fail did get overshadowed later that year when his older brother Matt Hardy faked a suicide note via YouTube video. In fact, it was so overshadowed that Jeff is now considered to be the more responsible Hardy brother, especially after he took responsibility for his actions and stayed clean, and it's quite likely that Matt wouldn't have lived it down had he not reinvented himself with the "Broken" gimmick.
  • His June 2022 DUI is rapidly heading in this direction, especially as more and more of the nastier details come to light^note such as driving with a suspended license and his vehicle lacking the interlock device it was court-ordered to have. It didn't help that it came off the heels of his controversial firing from WWE and a few months after his AEW debut, which was supposed to kick off the last run for the Hardy Boyz. It's this event, more than anything else, that has convinced even his most ardent fans that he's not going to get better, nor that he wants to get better, and that they don't want to see him anymore if he's going to put others in danger for the sake of his vices, particularly after Tammy Lynn Sytch had been arrested for killing an elderly man in a car crash that she'd caused while as intoxicated as Jeff had been^note  more than 3 times over the legal limit only a few months earlier. Some AEW fans also resented that this had happened after AEW had pushed Jeff hard following his debut, including over younger men (notably beating top young AEW original Darby Allin in the Owen Hart Memorial Tournament), resulting in the company looking foolish for taking a chance on him, and felt sorry for Matt who had presumably vouched for his brother to AEW management.
• Periphery Demographic: Jeff Hardy is a proven draw amongst teenage girls and young women who wouldn't otherwise be interested in professional wrestling. Nowhere was this more obvious than in his Ring of Honor appearance, where a couple hundred teenage girls showed up to cheer him while the RoHbots booed and mocked him.
• The Scrappy: For whatever reason, there is a large part of the internet community, even among those who generally like Jeff Hardy, that hate Willow The Wisp. There was a lot of hype on Highspots.com for the Hardyboyz vs Briscoe Brothers DVD but a lot of negative comments were made solely because Willow was in it.
• Squick: Any of the spots that involve the holes the holes in his ear lobes. To wit, Randy Orton pulls on them really hard. In a later match, he jams a screwdriver and twists. Sami Zayn handcuffs his ear to a ladder.
• Win Back the Crowd: Jeff Hardy's return to the company has him making a public apology to the crowd, apologizing for his unprofessional behavior causing the PPV to be ruined. About a year later, he won the 2012 Bound For Glory Series at No Surrender and he won the TNA World Heavyweight Championship from Austin Aries at Bound For Glory a month later. Of course, the fact he has -by all accounts and records- stayed clean since the incident does help a lot.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Jeff briefly appeared as Brother Nero during Matt's "Ultimate Deletion" match with Bray Wyatt while he was still out with an injury. The character never showed up again and was only given a passing reference when Bray called Jeff "Brother Nero" upon his return from his injury.
• X-Pac Heat
  • His first appearance for ROH did not go well. Despite being told by the fans not to come back however, "Brother Nero"'s eventual return was taken as well as anyone could hope for. He's tolerated while everyone focuses on Matt.
  • The Internet was not forgiving after the disaster that was Victory Road. It just didn't show since the Impact Zone, aside from a couple of regulars and plants, was mainly made of tourists who wandered inside. Even years later, Jeff has yet to completely live it down — though it was overshadowed by his brother's even dumber exploits later that year.