The Rise & Fall & Fall Of The Hardy Boys

Hello everyone and welcome to my latest column, I do apologise to all the fans of The Unrated Experience and also The Unrated Experience itself for me not being as active as I should, I have just been quite busy with work and family and stuff so apologies all round. In my time away from blogging I have seen the complete decline of one of my favourite tag teams of the Attitude era and all time, talking of the Hardy Boys.

As the Attitude Era was gathering steam, this young tag team from North Carolina popped up on Metal, a very young babyface team called The Hardy Boys, Matt and Jeff Hardy with their matching tights was basically, at that stage, the jobbing tag team to put over all the other teams at that time, teams like the Nation Of Domination, D.O.A. , Truth Commission, Los Boricuas, Doug Furnas & Phil LaFon would go out on a weekly basis and be put over by this young team, but when the Hardy’s could generate offence, they had some of the most innovate double teaming moves around at the time, the Event Omega, their original double teaming finisher of the top rope leg drop and splash combination was unseen, the closest comparison that comes to mind is the Power and Glory finisher of superplex and body splash by Paul Roma and Hercules hit the superplex.

When Sunday Night Heat came about, the Hardy’s were pushed a bit more and was able to get victories, I remember them beating Kai En Tai before the Break Down event but it wasn’t until 1999 where the mass WWE audience worldwide were introduced to The Hardy Boys, they were remodelled with new ring attire, given a heel persona and given Michael Hayes as a manager, and it was at that year’s King Of The Ring where the first Hardy Boys and Edge & Christian first fought on Pay Per View, a sign of things to come. After having a short tag title run with The Acolytes, it was October, No Mercy and a best of 5 series against Edge & Christian in the first tag team ladder match, one of the matches of the 90’s and instrumental in the evolution of the ladder match, and in this match, we get to see how “Xtreme” the Hardy’s could be, Jeff was doing crazy bumps and innovative moves with ladders that we have never seen before, Matt has not as ariel based as Jeff, more of a mat based wrestler with the occasional top rope move, a trend that I certainly notices throughout their careers and maybe the reason why Jeff was so over with the crowd compared to Matt, I always felt that Matt was underrated compared to his brother.

When they split in late 2001 and the brand extension separated them, Jeff was given a major push, he had a WWE Undisputed Title match against Undertaker in a ladder match, and I think this is where Jeff’s problems really began, I think, and this is only my opinion, that Jeff is dependent on his brother, and when he was on his own, he couldn’t cope with all the pressure of the push and the stardom. Matt always seem to be level headed to me, a very sensible person but it seemed that towards the end of his WWE career, he was bored of not being used, and seemingly missing the company of his brother, but was he having problems of himself??? Because as soon as he went to TNA, Jeff left, or got suspended, maybe the old problems set in, and now these problems have set in on Matt, which is very worrying because he seemed to be the sensible one, but he was away from TNA on suspension for quite a few months, and the fact that he is calling a car crash the most exhilarating moment of his life, rings alarm bells in my head, even worse than Jeff at times, I don’t recall Jeff saying a possible near death experience being exhilarating and liberating.

Let us remember here that there are innocent parties affected by the issues of these two, Jeff’s wife and Matt’s girlfriend, hopefully they are trying to help them and not enabling them and encouraging them to partake in any form of drugs, Jeff has a child, this is not the environment for a child to be brought up in, as a father myself, it disgusts me that a child can be around drugs of any sorts, it just doesn’t sit well with me. They have friends that have been in the wrestling business for many years, does Matt Hardy want to end up having the injuries that Shane Helms got from his motorcycle accident??? I would think not, but in the frame of mind that he is in at the moment, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.

This article is not meant in any way to bury Matt and Jeff Hardy, I write this as I was a fan of them, now I am a fan who has just seen them fall from the ultimate grace, I don’t think that we will ever see them in any wrestling promotion for quite some time, and they should not be considered able to wrestle until their demons are all sorted and taken care of. I hope that they both get the help that they need, for the sake of their friends and families, because it is ultimately them who will be hurt the most if the worst happens to them, and I hope that doesn’t happen to them.

Questioning The Current Happenings In Pro Wrestling

Well, we do seem to be going through a transitional period within WWE, but with change comes questions, and generally in professional wrestling, when change happens, we are not given answers to the questions that we are questioning. So this next article of mine will be quite different to my usual ones, it's more of a list of questions and statements that both WWE and TNA need to answer about their products and presentations.

Sting, a well respected legend from WCW and working to establish TNA as a global brand and to one day challenge WWE, but this “Joker” angle where your seemingly channelling Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson and Cesar Romero (from the 1960's TV series), are we meant to take this character seriously or is the goal to make the audience laugh??

The Impact zone cannot be too big to draw a huge crowd in for TV tapings, I would guess you could get 300 people in there, but when you get more people at a house show than TV tapings and PPV broadcasts, then this surely cannot be good for the company.

John Morrison was injured by R-Truth a couple months back, since when did getting injured constitute being fired, leaving Triple H to “Bring him back”??

When a heel does a promo in ring during Impact Wrestling, having the production team play audio booing over the heel's talking is not cool, for a fact the booing sounds like there are more people than there are in the Impact zone but also, look at the fans behind, they are not even interested in the promo going in the ring, and are mainly talking amongst themselves, I mainly noticed this with any Mexican America promos.

Many fans are sick and tired of Jerry Lawler's “Fat” jokes of Vickie Guerrero, I find his total paedophile-esque perversions over the likes of Kelly Kelly or Eve Torres is quite disturbing. Now we have to put up with Michael Cole's “Fat” jokes of Jim Ross now that he is back full time. Isn't WWE in partnership with GLAAD?? And if they are, why aren't these people reprimanded for such comments??

David Otunga and Mike McGillicutty are no longer Nexus, judging by the new music and tron videos this week, and also no Nexus armband, but there should be an explanation of sorts to why teams/factions break up, and not a simple crappy one like when Wade Barrett said that Daniel Bryan was thrown out of Nexus because he “Showed compassion” after the original Nexus ambush. As a fan, I would like a genuine ending to something, maybe CM Punk should have ended Nexus when on his 5 star promos, he could have said it was to focus on the WWE Title aspirations.

The CM Punk/John Cena feud is the hottest thing around in WWE at this minute, and Punk winning the WWE Title, in my view, was a victory for the wrestling fan and not the sports entertainment fan, but for him to “Walk away” and then return just 2 weeks has killed the story for many fans, fans have to realise that if Punk was out for a considerable amount of time, that the quality of WWE would fall, yes it would have given the story a bit more realism but we are in a post kayfabe era and in a sports entertainment era, so we need CM Punk on TV, and his promos are brilliant storytelling that fills in any voids for fans wondering why he's returning after him saying all that he did.

What are we suppose to think as fans when within the space of a week, different wrestlers are using each others entrance music, its misleading because many fans will think that there is some sort of Nexus/Corre reunion. If you think this is going to happen, you are sorely mistaken.

When did Santino Marella seemingly become an auditioneer for tag team partners to take on Otunga and McGillicutty, if you want challengers to the tag team titles, stop splitting teams, it's only a matter of time before The Usos, as pure as a tag team you can get in pro wrestling at the moment, are split up and separated onto different shows. If rumours are true that the Kings of Wrestling are coming from Ring Of Honor to WWE, will they stay a team for a long time, or will they be torn apart, like every other WWE team.

Zack Ryder, many people say he isn't worth the hype, the fact is look at all of what he has done when given a chance before the YouTube show was even created, lets not forget that he and Curt Hawkins started in WWE as the Major Brothers, seemingly a jobbing tag team who overcame the odds who beat top teams back then, then he had a pivotal role with Edge during his feud with Undertaker around WrestleMania 24, don't forget he was chokeslammed over the top rope onto Curt in that match, a bump many people wouldn't take. The solo career when started in ECW with his world famous one legged ring attire was great, he was never given a shot at he ECW title on a PPV as far as I can remember, but he was the man who ended Tommy Dreamer's WWECW career before Tommy went to TNA. So to say Zack doesn't deserve a push is an insult to him, the fact he hasn't been used in a while is a shame, but now we are set to get a lot more of Zack Ryder in WWE.

The majority of fans were happy that Christian finally won back the World Heavyweight Title from Randy Orton, myself included, but if I'm Christian, would you not be thinking that WWE has no faith in you to beat Randy Orton cleanly?? The WWE rules have always been that titles cannot change via count outs and disqualifications, but if you think about it, the World Heavyweight Title is in NWA/WCW heritage and in their title matches, if you lost the match via countout or dq, then you lost the belt too, so should we be surprised to see Christian use this?? Yes if truthful, and if this was mentioned post match on Smackdown as part of the ploy to win the title, I think it would add more credibility to him because ultimately I don't think WWE have faith in Christian hence why he cannot win a belt in a legitimate manner.

Well I'm done, for now, there are probably many more questions that need asking about the current state of pro wrestling, hopefully we will get some answers soon.