Kemo
04-02-2017, 10:21 PM
Jeff Hardy recently spoke with Chuck Carroll of CBS Sports to discuss Saturday’s ROH Supercard of Honor event in Orlando and more. Here are some of the highlights:
When we talked in December everything seemed so certain that you were going to re-sign with Impact. The Broken gimmick was working so well. What actually happened? There are a lot of rumors out there.
“It’s pretty simple. When we last spoke, Billy Corgan who is a good friend of myself and Matt, he was out at my property when we were filming Delete or Decay. He was going to own the company, be the president and all that good stuff. Basically, if he owned the company right now I’d still be under contract. But so many changes happened. When they bought him out or had a falling out with this other company and then another company, Anthem, came in. This other company leaves that I was negotiating with. And so, wow we don’t have a deal or anything. It was a fresh start with this Anthem crew. Things were just too uncertain and it was just weird. I just thought that I had to make things different for my career. Right now the time is right. There were signs, I believe, from a higher power. Bottom line if Billy was still there I’d still be there. But the way that all went down I was just ready to move on.”
One of the things that had been reported was that they were really slow in getting you guys the contracts and then pretty much gave you an ultimatum to sign them or get out. Is there any truth to the abruptness of how it all went down?
“Yeah, for sure. I was good to go with mine, but then Matt had some issues going on. So, time just moved on slowly. … Long story short, we couldn’t come to an agreement. They were very late. We offered to come drop the titles at the TV tapings in March and they said we couldn’t do that unless we were under contract. And I was like, “That’s so silly. Oh my God, this is pro wrestling anything is possible. Let’s do the right thing and come drop them to another team.” But that wasn’t good enough so we basically vacated them and never lost them. I wish them all the best. Seven years, I had a good time there. They were great to me and helped me through tough times. But it was just time to move on. So, yeah, very late contract negotiations.”
We’re at a point now where there has been some public back and forth by both sides. Are you surprised at the way they’re trying to protect the Broken gimmick? That has to be a little disappointing given that you did invest seven years with the company.
“It’s heartbreaking. I’m so passionate about any character I portray whether it’s Willow, the Anti-Christ, the Charismatic Enigma, Itchweed… I’m so passionate about that. Nero is my legit middle name. Me not being able to be called Brother Nero is very offensive and heartbreaking. The highest rated show last year was The Final Deletion and that’s a fact. The majority vote wins and people dug that. And then they kind of (pooped) on it. That’s not cool. And now with this lawsuit, we did this Ring of Honor pay-per-view out in Las Vegas and we got these cease and desist letters. I couldn’t believe it. In the print it said TNA developed these characters specifically for Matt and Jeff Hardy and that is so untrue. Matt developed himself and Brother Nero started to flow. I developed Brother Nero with the eyes and how I act. It’s all ours and it is very sad an disappointing. It’s almost surreal like, “Is this really happening?”
Rumor has it that WWE has presented you guys with contracts. Is there any truth to that?
“No, because you have to go through so much testing and all of that. It’s a long process. But, no. We know some people there and naturally after WrestleMania dies down, maybe a couple of months from now, we’ll see what’s possible. But there is no truth to that whatsoever.”
You just mentioned talking to Ring of Honor about doing a live performance at one of their shows. Have you guys re-signed there? Are you going to re-sign? What I was told was that you were signed for the “immediate future.” That sounds like a short-term deal, but you tell me. How long are you going to be sticking around there?
“It’s short-term. It’s through the summer. What’s cool about Ring of Honor is that we can still go out and work the indie dates. That’s another thing about the TNA deal was that they wanted to take our indy dates from us and I really enjoy working the independent circuit. You meet some crazy, cool, interesting people and the shows have been so great as of late. I would say our Ring of Honor deals are through the summer. It’s a short-term deal and we’ll see how things go. We’ll test the waters for a while and hopefully help the company grow.”
So Saturday isn’t going to the be the last time we see you guys in a Ring of Honor ring?
“Oh, no. No, there’s going to be many more shows. Many more honorable shows.”
You can listen to the interview here:
6I7ba-ZlqXo
When we talked in December everything seemed so certain that you were going to re-sign with Impact. The Broken gimmick was working so well. What actually happened? There are a lot of rumors out there.
“It’s pretty simple. When we last spoke, Billy Corgan who is a good friend of myself and Matt, he was out at my property when we were filming Delete or Decay. He was going to own the company, be the president and all that good stuff. Basically, if he owned the company right now I’d still be under contract. But so many changes happened. When they bought him out or had a falling out with this other company and then another company, Anthem, came in. This other company leaves that I was negotiating with. And so, wow we don’t have a deal or anything. It was a fresh start with this Anthem crew. Things were just too uncertain and it was just weird. I just thought that I had to make things different for my career. Right now the time is right. There were signs, I believe, from a higher power. Bottom line if Billy was still there I’d still be there. But the way that all went down I was just ready to move on.”
One of the things that had been reported was that they were really slow in getting you guys the contracts and then pretty much gave you an ultimatum to sign them or get out. Is there any truth to the abruptness of how it all went down?
“Yeah, for sure. I was good to go with mine, but then Matt had some issues going on. So, time just moved on slowly. … Long story short, we couldn’t come to an agreement. They were very late. We offered to come drop the titles at the TV tapings in March and they said we couldn’t do that unless we were under contract. And I was like, “That’s so silly. Oh my God, this is pro wrestling anything is possible. Let’s do the right thing and come drop them to another team.” But that wasn’t good enough so we basically vacated them and never lost them. I wish them all the best. Seven years, I had a good time there. They were great to me and helped me through tough times. But it was just time to move on. So, yeah, very late contract negotiations.”
We’re at a point now where there has been some public back and forth by both sides. Are you surprised at the way they’re trying to protect the Broken gimmick? That has to be a little disappointing given that you did invest seven years with the company.
“It’s heartbreaking. I’m so passionate about any character I portray whether it’s Willow, the Anti-Christ, the Charismatic Enigma, Itchweed… I’m so passionate about that. Nero is my legit middle name. Me not being able to be called Brother Nero is very offensive and heartbreaking. The highest rated show last year was The Final Deletion and that’s a fact. The majority vote wins and people dug that. And then they kind of (pooped) on it. That’s not cool. And now with this lawsuit, we did this Ring of Honor pay-per-view out in Las Vegas and we got these cease and desist letters. I couldn’t believe it. In the print it said TNA developed these characters specifically for Matt and Jeff Hardy and that is so untrue. Matt developed himself and Brother Nero started to flow. I developed Brother Nero with the eyes and how I act. It’s all ours and it is very sad an disappointing. It’s almost surreal like, “Is this really happening?”
Rumor has it that WWE has presented you guys with contracts. Is there any truth to that?
“No, because you have to go through so much testing and all of that. It’s a long process. But, no. We know some people there and naturally after WrestleMania dies down, maybe a couple of months from now, we’ll see what’s possible. But there is no truth to that whatsoever.”
You just mentioned talking to Ring of Honor about doing a live performance at one of their shows. Have you guys re-signed there? Are you going to re-sign? What I was told was that you were signed for the “immediate future.” That sounds like a short-term deal, but you tell me. How long are you going to be sticking around there?
“It’s short-term. It’s through the summer. What’s cool about Ring of Honor is that we can still go out and work the indie dates. That’s another thing about the TNA deal was that they wanted to take our indy dates from us and I really enjoy working the independent circuit. You meet some crazy, cool, interesting people and the shows have been so great as of late. I would say our Ring of Honor deals are through the summer. It’s a short-term deal and we’ll see how things go. We’ll test the waters for a while and hopefully help the company grow.”
So Saturday isn’t going to the be the last time we see you guys in a Ring of Honor ring?
“Oh, no. No, there’s going to be many more shows. Many more honorable shows.”
You can listen to the interview here:
6I7ba-ZlqXo