Posted in: The Classroom The Classroom - After School Detention: Jeff Hardy
By Sean Taylor
May 15, 2009 - 10:27:28 PM
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to The Classroom. To start this off, I wanted to finally release the results of my WrestleMania Top 10 poll. Thanks to you the readers, we have an official list of the Top 10 Favourite WrestleManias. The list is as follows:
1) WrestleMania IV
2) WrestleMania V
3) WrestleMania X-8
4) WrestleMania X-Seven
5) (tie) WrestleMania 23 & WrestleMania 24
6) WrestleMania XIX
7) (tie) WrestleMania III & WrestleMania 2000
8) WrestleMania X
9) WrestleMania VI
10) WrestleMania XIV
I have to say that I’m pretty cool with that ranking. Although I thought it was interesting that WrestleManias 1, 2, 9, 11, and 24 didn’t receive a single vote. What does that mean? Not much. Just interesting. Thanks to all who voted.
Before we get to the main event, I wanted to comment on something I read online. Devin Cutting is reporting that WWE will tape a live episode of Monday Night Raw on Labor Day this year. The date of the event is September 7, 2009, and will be broadcast live from Chicago's Allstate Arena. This marks the first time WWE has held a live Raw broadcast on Labor Day since 2006. Well good flying fuck finally! You know I’ve been worried that Raw was going to continue to suck with Randy Orton as champion but there is actually a sun rising in the distance. On Labour Day – FOUR FUCKING MONTHS AWAY – the WWE will end the longest two-year streak ever in wrestling history. WCW beating WWE eighty-some-odd weeks in a row? Fuck that. Raw will be FUCKING LIVE ON LABOUR DAY. Just like . . . every . . . other . . . week.
Today’s free-flowing rant of nothing-less-than hostility features one of the so-called “wrestlers” that have ever stepped into a WWE ring. I’d say the same for a TNA ring but there, he was pretty much par for the course. They call him the Jeff Hardy. I call him the newest face in my After School Detention.
I Saw Him Walking
Ah, Jeff Hardy. The only man to single-handedly ruin not only his career but also that of his brother. Granted, Matt recovered and current resides on the number one brand in the number one company, but to think about how big he would be at this point if it wasn’t for his leech of a younger brother – it’s frightening. But regardless we’re not here to discuss Matt. We’re here to talk about Jeff. Let’s start off by taking a good hard look at the man (and I use that term lightly).
If you had a daughter and this was what she brought home the night of prom, you’d lock your daughter in the highest room of your house, throw away the key, and go back to the front door with a loaded shotgun. You’d have to. Or else you’d be considered the worst parent on the face of the Earth and you’d have to drug out into the street and made available for every homosexual, sexually aggressive homeless street urchin passing by. Seriously, look at him. He’s a freak. He’s got no muscle definition, that idiotic beard, and ridiculous face paint make him look like a feature on a future episode of To Catch A Predator. Ok, ok, it’s very easy to make fun of how he looks. I know. So let’s examine how he dresses.
The manner is which a wrestler dresses is directly related to his potential success. Imagine Hulk Hogan not in red and yellow. Imagine “Stone Cold” Steve Austin not wearing his black vest. Imagine Bret “The Hitman” Hart not wearing pink. Before we continue, we’ll wait for Mazza to stop smiling while picturing Hogan, Austin, and Hart naked (Kidding!). Regardless, the point is that in the world of professional wrestling, the clothes really do make the man. In Jeff Hardy’s case, the clothes make him a wannabe transsexual.
Let’s go bottom to top. Now he does wear wrestling boots. That’s ok. But he generally covers them with black pants with the white stitches showing through. Still clinging to that lost youth, Jeff? Do you wish you were back in the 1990s listening to No Doubt and Blind Melon albums from 1998? Just can’t let that gothic/emo attitude go, can you? Despite all your rage you’re still just a rat in a cage? Ya freak! Oh and let’s not forget the belt with mini-spikes that holds up with pants – well kinda. He’s one of those idiots who apparently likes to hike up his underwear past the belt line. I don’t want to sound like Denis Leary or anything but dammit PULL UP YOUR PANTS! Nobody gives a shit what boxers you wear. It doesn’t make you look cool, Jeff. It makes you look homeless.
And what the fuck is with the wife-beaters? Granted not all are redneck white but damn, Jeff. His is the only wrestling outfit inspired by Larry “The Cable Guy”. But anything is better than his stupid tattoos. I can appreciate someone who expresses him or herself by getting tattoos but when your arms look like your covered with a green-coloured flesh-eating disease, it’s makes it obvious that your making up for some thing that you’re not proud of. And that something is quite obviously your facial hair.
What in the shit is that? Is it supposed to be flames shooting up from . . . his neck? What fucking sense does that make? And if that’s not enough he started wearing face paint during his World Title run. Really? That’s the way you want to be remembered in the history of champions? With the painting of a gay tiger on your face? I know what some of you are thinking. “But he’s an artist.” I’ll get to that later. But at the very bottom of it, when your champion paints himself to look like a Care Bear on crack, it’s probably not going to last. And shockingly (and rightfully), it didn’t.
The Catchphrase
He doesn’t have one. Moving on.
Alas Poor Ring Skills, I Knew Him Well
I’ve made comments about spot monkeys ruining the wrestling business before but I think I can pinpoint the reason for it. The luchadores in the old WCW kind of opened fans’ eyes to the idea of high-flying wrestling being out there. The Rockers in the late 1980s opened the door for young wrestlers to start challenging the hulked up bodies and their slow paced matches. All of that was great. It added excitement to the product while keeping all of the established traditions in play. That’s a good thing. That’s how wrestling evolves.
But along comes Jeff Hardy to fuck everything up. I can’t deny that The Hardy Boyz added a lot to the WWE product in the late 90s and early 00s (is it 00s? Whatever) and they were definitely a major reason why the WWE was able to survive and win the Monday Night War. But ever since going solo, Jeff has been the catalyst for the downfall of professional wrestling. Oh ho, yes he has. And if you didn’t like that statement, you’re not going to like the next one that backs it up. Jeff Hardy isn’t a wrestler. Yeah. I said it. Hell, I hate Rey Mysterio with every fibre of my being but at least he’s a wrestler. How can I not consider Jeffie a wrestler? Simple.
He doesn’t wrestle.
He flips. He flops. He skips. He hops. But he doesn’t wrestle. Can name a big time, memorable match that Jeff Hardy actually performed a series of wrestling moves? No, you can’t. You’re thinking of Money In The Bank Matches, Ladder Matches, and Goofy-Purple-Mesh-Arm-Condoms On A Pole Matches. There’s never been a five-star classic featuring Jeff Hardy. There’s only broken tables and Jeff rolling around like he’s dry-humping the mat. The problem here is because he takes off his shirt, he gets the girls to scream. Aspiring wrestlers see the girls scream and think that if they act like Jeff, they will make the girls scream. So we had a guy poorly copying Shawn Michaels and more guys poorly copying the copier. It’s like an old game of Broken Telephone. Starts with “Phenomenal Athleticism” and it ends up being “Over-Hyped Stuntman”.
He can’t even do the Twist of Fate properly. Fuck, Lita did a better Twist of Fate and hers were atrocious (“atrocious” means bad for the Jeff Hardy fans by the way). Look at his big “finishing move”. It could be any more basic. Go to the top and fall. And sometimes, HE EVEN FUCKS THAT UP!!! How can you fuck up falling? You don’t need to do ANYTHING. Just fall. Let gravity takes its course. Basic science that grade six kids understand and this pathetic excuse for a wrestler can’t even grasp that concept. So you know what, Jeff? Come out, skip to the ring like a girl, spasm like an epilepsy sufferer while your pryo goes off, and flippity-flop around the ring. You won’t make it big and you’ll fade into nothingness. No one will remember you for anything other that “high-risk” moves and “death-defying” action. You’ll be Marty Jannetty. Yeah, sucks doesn’t it?
Mic Skills
None. Next.
How Does WWE Describe Him?
First let’s take a look at one of Jeff’s “sexy” pictures. I found this on a MySpace page by some ugly chick who’s probably going to save a lot of money on prom dresses.
I’d like to thank the GLADD’s official magazine for making this picture available to the public.
For the last part of this column, I thought I’d translate the words on Jeff’s official WWE.com profile page so that regular non-crazy people can interpret it.
Simply put, Jeff Hardy is an artist. His world revolves around writing “emoetry,” recording music (“alternative, alternative music,” according to his brother Matt), and employing tinfoil and paint to craft intimate, personal, and sometimes bizarre works of art. His house is decorated with toys, artificial plants and life-size Japanese fiberglass sculptures. One of his most cherished creations—a thirty-foot “Aluminummy” statue called Neroameee, from Nero, his middle name—stands tall outside his studio.
Emo. Pure and simply, emo. He even calls it “emoetry”. What the fuck is that? “I am nothing. I represent nothing. I have always been nothing. I will be nothing in the future.” If someone you know wrote this kind of crap and called it “emotry”, you’d kick his ass. You would! Don’t lie to yourself. But somehow, because Jeffie-boy takes off his shirt and falls off of ladders, it makes him cool? Fuck that. Do you know what it means when you make sculptures and call them Aluminummy and Neroameee? It means you’re fucking nuts. Looney as shit. In need of serious head-fixin’. And what’s with the “artist” nonsense. Leonardo Da Vinci was an artist. Rembrandt was an artist. Beethoven was an artist. Jeff Hardy is a psycho with aluminum, sheers, and Superglue. If Jeff Hardy is an artist, I’m submitting my second grade picture of a doggie made with dried pasta noodles and Scotch tape to the New York City Art Museum.
And for the Jeff Hardy fans who don’t know their ancient civilization history, Nero was a Roman Emperor who set fire to Rome. He then danced and played the fiddle while the city burned to the ground killing thousands. Historians have determined that the reason he did was that he . . . was fucking nuts! He went crazy. Similarities? Yes. Coincidence? No.
Still, this artist has always been drawn to another, very different canvas—that of the squared circle. Growing up with Matt in the pinewoods of Cameron, North Carolina, 11-year-old Jeff—influenced by the likes of Ric Flair, the Fabulous Freebirds, and the Rockers—took a ramp he built for his bike and painted it to resemble an entrance stage for his “wrestling ring,” the backyard trampoline. As he grew older, so did his desire to take greater risks, whether it was to feel the rush of executing hundred-foot-high triples on his motorcross bike, or jumping off the roof of his house as a member of the brothers’ “Teenage Wrestling Federation.” It was such fearlessness and desire that would bring the 16-year-old daredevil to World Wrestling Entertainment, and after several years catapult him to worldwide fame and main-event status, first as one-half of WWE’s high-flying “Team Extreme,” The Hardys, then in singles competition.
A trampoline. He bounced around on a trampoline and that qualifies him to be a wrestler. Is the wrestling business that hard up for talent these days? Alright, alright, I admit, there’s not much here I can make fun of. Yes, we all cut stupid promos in our backyard when we were kids and yes, when there was trampoline or a crash mat, we tried the high-flying schtick too. But you notice how at the end of the paragraph it says “then in singles competition”. Not much to say about his singles career huh? And does the word “extreme” really mean anything anymore? Really? Think about all the other things that have been called “extreme”. Doritos. Corn chips. Breakfast cereal. Tommy Dreamer. “Extreme” is a buzz word used by pompous, self-absorbed marketing executives who have nothing positive to say about something . . . and Tommy Dreamer.
Though many of his paintings are abstract, this free spirit is a Rembrandt inside the ring, signing his name not with the traditional paintbrush or pen, but with wildly unorthodox, high-impact maneuvers off top ropes and 20-foot ladders. His credo is simple: to create, then surpass his creation.
He signs his name with wildy unorthodox, high-impact maneuvers off top ropes and 20-foot ladders. I would really advise against attaining one of Jeff Hardy’s autograph appearances.
Unfortunately, most true artists must sink to their lowest point before attaining their greatest heights. For Jeff, the wear-and-tear of living life on the road would help prompt him to leave WWE in 2003. But after a three-year personal journey of refocusing his passion and energies, he now finds himself “in a positive place…and that’s what motivates me.” Since returning to WWE in August 2006, this reinspired risk-taker has gone back to creating the art he loves most—entertaining WWE fans in arenas around the world. And his most extreme masterpiece awaits.
A back-handed slap at TNA. Check. He kicked the habit of sticking needles in arms (kinda). Check. A cheesy quote to inspire fandom. Check. And a closing line that looks into the future with reverence and awe while using the word “extreme”. Check. YAWN! I want to respond to the first line here. True artists don’t suffer before being recognized. They die first. I’m not wishing death of Jeff Hardy. Just going away would suffice. Until then, you’ll forever remain the newest student in Sean Taylor’s . . .
After School Detention.
Well that about wraps up this edition of The Classroom. Tune in soon as I will be starting another History Of series. That’s right. I’ve selected a topic and I think everyone’s going to enjoy it. I told Skittlez that he wouldn’t have to pay $8 to read them and I’ll say now, you’ll need to go to the bathroom first because there will be no intermission. What could the topic be? Stick around LordsOfPain.net to find out. As always your feedback is welcomed. You can email me here or if you’re a member of the Columns Forum, post here.
