A mind wasted is a terrible thing

On August 23, Jeff Hardy lost the WWE World championship to CM Punk. Two nights later, after taping WWE Friday Night Smackdown for broadcast later in the week, Hardy ended his 2nd tour of duty with WWE by losing a cage match to Punk. After a promo that hinted at a possible future return, Hardy was blindsided on the stage by Punk, which suggested that Hardy would return sometime in the next year, perhaps as early as Wrestlemania 26 in March.

As of September 11, however, that picture has been erased. Hardy was arrested by sheriff's deputies in his home in North Carolina. What was the problem? Drugs. The very thing that was at the center of his feud with Punk, and before that, with Edge, who was forever ripping Hardy as a screwup and failure in TV promos. Hardy has been accused of not only possession, but drug trafficking. They found Vicodin, Somas, and some anabolic steroids in the Hardy house, all of this coming 2 weeks after his last match. Reports have stated that there had been an investigation while Hardy was still under contract to WWE, and if Hardy knew about it, this might explain his reluctance to sign a new deal with the company, choosing instead to let his last deal expire on August 25. He might have been aware the law was closing in, and didn't want to have the company involved. That much is just speculation on the part of this writer.

On television, Punk, who had been turned heel to feud with Hardy, was trying to convince the audience that his straight-edge ways would be a sort of cure for their ills, going so far as to refer to the daredevil Hardy as the "Charismatic Enabler", a play on "Charismatic Enigma", the nickname Hardy picked up while with TNA a few years ago. Punk dusted off Nancy Reagan's "Just say NO!" campaign from the 80's, but was met with derision and boos. In the saddest of ironies, one of Punk's promos vs. Hardy was so frighteningly prophetic, in which he said Hardy, presented as a "recovering addict", would backslide into drug use, effectively sabotaging his own career in the process. As fate would have it, and not even Punk and the creative team realized this at the time, it turns out the current champion was right.

Only in the twisted bizarro world of WWE could this possibly happen. A "recovering addict" is hailed as a hero, flaws and all, and a man who was a friend, trying to lead him away from his "demons", is considered a villain for "trying to do the right thing". The chances of Hardy returning to WWE now are minute at best. I would venture to guess that if he does end up serving jail time----and that does seem increasingly likely----his career is effectively over at age 32. The case already has garnered some national attention, covered initially by TMZ on television and on its website, and other outlets have picked up the trail. It would be a long time, well into the next decade, I'd suspect, before Hardy next enters a wrestling ring.