Originally training with his older brother Matt on a trampoline that their father had bought them for Christmas in 1987 (when he was only ten), Jeffrey Nero Hardy was forced to stop playing football in high school, when his coach insisted that he choose between wrestling and football. Naturally, Hardy chose wrestling; by this point, it was all he wanted to do. Working in local promotions around the US for several years, Matt and Jeff formed their own company - OMEGA Championship Wrestling, standing for Organisation of Modern Extreme Grappling Arts - in their home town of Cameron, North Caroline in 1997. Future luminaries of US pro wrestling like Shane Helms and Shannon Moore, amongst others, wrestled for OMEGA before it folded in 1999, after the Hardy boys became the Hardy Boyz, signing with the WWF. The brothers had wrestled for the WWF on and off for a few years as nothing but enhancement talent. Matt's debut was against former star turned jobber to the stars, Nikolai Volkoff on Monday Night RAW in May 1994, only a few months shy of his twentieth birthday. However, Jeff's first WWE match came two weeks afterwards, when he was only sixteen. He'd lied about his age to get the opportunity, telling them that he was eighteen, and on June 6th 1994, when Razor Ramon's opponent for a TV taping of RAW no-showed, Hardy would be drafted in to replace him at the last minute. He even wrestled under the missing man's name, Keith Davis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PriSho0xq0o Naturally, it's a squash - almost all WWF TV matches were, back then. Ninety seconds in, in classic 'Bad Guy' mode, Hall drawls "welcome to the big time, chico" in the ear of his hapless teenaged opponent, a sentiment enthusiastically echoed by 'the Macho Man' Randy Savage on commentary. If they only knew.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
