Matt and Jeff Hardy were a match made in heaven from an early age, when they ran their own local promotion, OMEGA Wrestling. They debuted with WWF, as it was then, in the mid-nineties as teenage jobbers, but hit the main roster properly in 1998 as The Hardy Boyz. With Matts girlfriend Lita joining them, Team Xtreme would quickly become central to the WWF/WWE tag team division, the pair being incredibly popular with fans. Their high profile ladder matches with Edge & Christian and the Dudley Boyz are still legendary to this day, culminating in the invention of the TLC match at Summerslam 2000, representing each of the specialities of the three teams: tables for the Dudleys, ladders for the Hardys and chairs for Edge & Christian. Jeff, however, was the star. Far more popular than his older brother (who was nonetheless the more capable technical wrestler), the high-flying risk taker would enter into a minor feud with the Undertaker and then go straight for the Intercontinental title in 2003. Matt would tease a feud at that time, but WWE werent prepared to go with it, and Jeff would be released due to his notorious drug problems shortly afterwards anyway. The pair would reconcile upon his return, sporadically teaming up as Jeffs star rose, while Matt was relegated to the C brand, the WWEs anaemic version of ECW. The family feud everyone had been waiting for finally hit around five or six years too late in early 2009, when Jeff was already in main event competition. Matt finally snapped at always playing second fiddle to his younger brother, turning heel on him and costing him the WWE title, but audiences had been told to view the older Hardy as a midcard attraction for years, and werent interested in the blood feud between the two any longer. Jeff was too over, and they wanted him in top level matches. A series of gimmicked matches followed through Wrestlemania that year, but the time had passed. What could have been the hottest ticket of 2003 or 2004 became a disappointment and a distraction in 2009.
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.
