Hardy has many demons - we all know that. It's so unfortunate that he apparently failed to learn from his drug trafficking case and may have had the audacity to appear at a PPV under the influence of something. I'm not saying he WAS under the influence - but by the looks of things, he did not appear his normal spirited self. The WWE has reached out to help former wrestlers who have struggled with drugs/alcohol. Scott Hall comes to mind. I wonder if TNA approaches things the same way. After all, the well being of the athlete should be the first priority.

Jeff has tremendous ability. I was at Night of Champions on July 26, 2009 when Hardy beat CM Punk for the World Heavyweight Title. Hardy seemed legitimately honored to be holding the belt. His talent is as good as anyone. I always wondered how an Undertaker/Hardy match would go over at a future Wrestlemania.

Best wishes to Jeff on whatever it is he is going through.

This whole mess is only gonna make the Rise and Fall of TNA DVD that much better when it WILL finally get released. But I guess there would have to actually be a rise in order to be a fall.

TNA could put the belt back on RVD, then have Sting beat him, and just erase Jeff Hardy's name from the record books.

Having watched the video, and read a bunch of stuff today... I still think it's a work. I just can't believe that TNA would have allowed him out there, particularly when they did have a backup plan for the last time this happened. I think they're trying to do a Charlie Sheen angle, and I bet Hardy's going to show up unannounced to the tapings this week and lay out Bischoff.

Both Russo and Bischoff are guys that loved worked shoots, and making us say "okay, everything else was fake, but that wasn't supposed to happen". I know people have pointed out all the other things that were going on, the way Hebner and Borash behaved, as being clues that it was real, but... they're all performers. All of them. Why believe that they weren't just playing their parts well?

Anyway, if it is a work, it's deplorable... but I can't say it's not smart. For one Monday, at least, during the season of WrestleMania, TNA had everybody talking about them. Which isn't something they could say last year, when they were AIRING on Monday.

I don't know, I still feel like believing this whole mess is akin to drinking Russo's Kool-Aid.
Two questions:
1.) As I assume everyone has seen the video clip of the squash---Isn't that a very conveniently placed camera angle as it perfectly captures Sting holding down a struggling Hardy from the clearest vantage point possible to illustrate the alleged squash?
2.) Isn't is also convenient how we follow Sting back up the ramp and just happen to have a perfectly centered close up as he says "I agree" to the chants of B.S.?

----Again, there is a whole PPV to put in context that I don't think many have seen:
A.) Bully Ray and Dreamer hit each other with stuffed animals and blow up dolls and sold the hits.
B.) RVD called out Anderson for stealing his new Schtick from Stone Cold, and their match featured a point where Anderson purposely messed up an RVD leapfrog. This is blurring the lines of work and reality to an unreasonable and almost purposeful extreme.
C.) Hernandez squirted Morgan with a bottle of fake blood to win a "first blood" match, to ugly crowd reaction.
D.) The moment in question directly followed a double count out of the Anderson/RVD match which also pi$$ed the fans off, and which RVD and Anderson mutually portrayed "frustration" with.
E.) Hardy has already done a mock-drugged-out entrance at Genesis, where he lost the title to Anderson, when he came out smoking a cigarette.
F.) Almost IMMEDIATELY after it happened, Val Venis, a beneficiary of Russo writing at WWE, came out with a video blasting Hardy for at the very least not selling the finishing move of "an Icon". Do other wrestlers, off the record, really go around calling Sting "The Icon"? Especially as it's a TNA applied title more than an organic one? I personally really doubt it.

Also, Kazarian used a Charlie Sheen "Winning" comment during his mediocre promo during the PPV. Russo is pulling a stunt. Either Hardy goes away, and the point is moot, or he doesn't, and Russo and TNA have started and manipulated subsequent rumors to get play from Jeff's legal troubles and to have a very Russo-ian program that is ugly and wrong on its face, as most of his programs are.
The whole PPV stunk to high heaven as if there was some sort of ulterior motive. I think Russo, Hogan, et al are watching the pseudo-success of crap like Jersey Shore and have somehow convinced themselves that a trainwreck of a wrestling show will bring in viewers, and I think this Hardy business is the first step in blurring the lines of fiction and work in that direction. Yes, this is a monumentally stupid idea, and will crush TNA---but it is the theory that the evidence supports. To go full circle---The camera is not omnipresent. It needs direction to capture certain angles and shots, and it seemed to be in some awfully convenient places during that match.

I agree with S.D.He was one very talented performer.I say WAS because now he,s The Charlie Sheen Of TNA.I hope this clownn gets jail time and not a slap on the wrist.

Good for Jeff.

I wouldn't mind if Mr. Eck saw fit to give me his opinion on something I'd like to add to my case for a worked shoot, as I think it's important for us as fans to really recognize the stupidity of what's gone on...
As you mentioned on a blog previous to this incident, Mr. Eck, ("TNA Finally Gets Around to Hyping Victory Road..."), there was a now suspicious situation in which TNA did not even announce the card for the PPV until the go-home show, and did not hype it at all otherwise.
Were they trying to diminish buy rates to assuage what they knew would be a backlash by people who actually paid $35 to see it? Does this sound crazy and self-destrutive to do? Yeah, unless one remembers that it's Russo, Hogan, Bischoff and Jarrett steering the ship, and that they are no doubt convinced that this is just a step in their brilliant master plan.
Remember now the Bash at the Beach that was the final nail in WCW's coffin and involved all four, and the fact that these same idiots still claim that not all of that incident was worked, even though at first they all claimed that it was not worked at ALL, (until they got caught in inconsistencies)---yeah, and now they're all back together again and working together, after changing their Bash stories thirty times a piece in the last ten years. How convenient.
Russo et al think that they are performing some revolutionary trick, that they are going to have a wrestling show in which it is overtly recognized that the whole thing is faked-from characters to matches to promos, but with an intimation that REAL feuds and troubles go on behind the scenes of this faked show, and that it leaks out in front of the camera, (again, the RVD/Anderson promo and match at the same PPV also illustrated this)---thinking no doubt that ten years ago they were just too far ahead of their time when they flushed WCW down the tubes. Imagine, based on what they've done before, Vince Russo's elation at discovering Jersey Shore---("See, Terry? Eric? Jeff? I TOLD you--THIS is entertainment!...Terry! Jeff's legal troubles! My God! And Charlie Sheen...I've got the best idea EVER! Get Jeff in here!")
Now, they are convinced that the time and circumstances are right for their brilliance to be appreciated. All four have blamed mismanagement at Turner for what went down before. The fans had it all wrong. They were all Smart and Right, and just being held back by corporate heads that didn't know wrestling like Vince, Terry, Eric and Jeff do. Yeah, right.

How is no one calling this an angle? It reeks of Russo in that it's controversial, "reality" caught on film and also, lame.

"[T]here was a now suspicious situation in which TNA did not even announce the card for the PPV until the go-home show, and did not hype it at all otherwise."

__________________________________

I suspect that it was just the act of a poorly-managed wrestling company. In WCW's dying days, they wouldn't announce a pay-per-view's card until the PPV had begun! (that's what I have read, anyway; I had given up on WCW long before then)

@ Christopher

I do believe that there is a case to be made for general incompetence, yet from the suspicious Val Venis video that showed up not long after the match to the general feel of the PPV--(not so much a feel of incompetence as the fact that most of the big matches and promos featured a bizarre attempt to blend work with "reality"), the preponderance of circumstantial evidence is that the Hardy situation is a work of some Russo-ian sort.
The last days of WCW did feature Nitros and Thunders that had no set card until showtime, but I don't remember the PPVs being quite the same---at least they were promoted beforehand if nothing else-and what killed those PPVs, like the horrible New Blood Rising and Bash at the Beach that killed the company, were Russo worked shoots that also seemed to a lot of folks to be real shoots, for quite sometime afterwards, mostly because it was hard to believe that anyone would be crazy or stupid enough to run them.
The latest development---TNA offering 6 months of free TNAonDemand.com for PPV buyers is another piece of circumstantial evidence not to be looked at itself, but in context of ten or twelve other things. "Jeez, we're sorry, but here's 6 months worth of PPVs and assorted TNA propaganda for free". It almost seems like a plan to appease those who bought the PPV in the first place that a moron like Russo could have sold to a moron like Jarrett, with the horrid idea that it will inspire more viewership in the long run, like a drug dealer giving enough to the victim free so that he or she gets hooked. Russo is a pimp and a scumbag, and he thinks like that---as do Hogan and Bischoff---Jarrett just seems to be dumb and to be content to believe that the other three are geniuses that are going to do his company good in the long run.
The real link to WCW is that the four folks involved-Jarrett, Hogan, Russo and Bischoff, have pulled worked shoots just as stupid and blind and tasteless as this one. It seems people have forgotten that plain incompetence is not primarily to blame for WCW's fall. It was actually insane egotism and ideas for worked shoots that sounded as if they'd been decided on by a commitee of mental patients.

In either case, whether my theory hold true, or whether you are right, (which I'm not saying that you are wrong-only that I find a higher probability of a worked shoot), the result is the same. Unless tonight's iMPACT features live video of Russo, Hogan, Bischoff and Jarrett being locked in bamboo cages, poked with sharp sticks and then thrown over the side of a boat in the mid-Atlantic to be picked apart by oceanic white-tip sharks---there is no way to fix the damage that has been done.
My guess for tonight is that the matter will be addressed in a way which will increase its probability as a worked shoot. Look either for an overt thing like Sting calling out how bad the company's gotten that they let a drug addict take top billing--as a knock against "Immortal", or a subtle thing like Sting marching out with a new title belt and trashing the Hardy custom Diva belt-saying it's a new era and time to clean out "Immortal", or both. Also look for the real talents like Styles, Joe, Anderson, RVD and the rest to be undermined, relegated to matches and promos that never really allow them to get over in front of Sting and Angle and Jarrett and the other geezers---and for TNA to fold very quickly.

Wow, what a mess. After reading up on the situation, I have to think Worked Shoot is a strong possibility. Russo is the kind of dumb chimp who tries to work in whatever he sees currently getting attention in entertainment news. The last few weeks have been full of that idiot Charlie Sheen and his drug problems, and the reaction of a large number of people has been to cheer Sheen on! With folks constantly making comments like, "you go dude!" and "I wanna party with Charlie, dat boy is a serious pimp!", it's not a stretch to think Russo saw all this and figured folks would react the same way to Jeff Hardy's party habit ruining a show. Lame as hell I know, but it's certainly a possibility :-(