10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About Jeff Hardy

2. He Was Fired In 2003 For Refusing Drug Rehab

As a singles star in early 2003, Hardy was somebody that WWE wanted to build around for the future. Then he got fired on April 22, 2003 when he was just 25 years old. It took him three years to get back to the company that made him famous. He was released because they wanted him to go to rehab. There were reports that said he had an addiction to painkillers as well as crystal meth. He had also started showing erratic behavior by going late to live events, working sloppy in the ring and then he failed a drug test too. This was when WWE wasn't testing stars as often as they do now, so a failure showed he really was overdoing it. When he returned to WWE in 2006, WWE.com put an article up where Hardy claimed he didn't need rehab for his drug problems: €œI didn€™t need rehab. When I was released from WWE, it wasn€™t just about demons or demonic metaphors that relate to drug use. I failed numerous drug tests because I just didn€™t care€didn€™t care to wrestle anymore. A sense of me believes that it might have just been a way out . That€™s in the past, and that€™s forgotten about. I€™m in a positive place now€and that€™s what motivates me.€ If you followed Hardy's career at all then you know that his drug dependency issues didn't really change at that point. Those problems continued to plague him. It was never explained on WWE television why he was gone. They addressed it on the company website, but it's not like they were going to say one of their top stars was gone because he had a drug problem.