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So let’s start with Jeff who, according to reports, had his house searched by local authorities, who turned up the following: 262 Vicodins, 180 Somas, 555 milliliters of anabolic steroids, a residual amount of powder cocaine, and drug paraphernalia. My first thought when I read this was “Damn, what small country’s army was he planning on partying with?†I’ve known some people who have had some serious drug habits, but even their jaws would hit the ground if they walked into a room and saw that stash.
My next thought was PURE SPECULATION, but I don’t know how anyone can look at a stash that size and believe it was all just for Jeff. I know that there are wrestlers who can put unbelievable amounts of stuff in their bodies and still function, but that’s a LOT of drugs and unless his substance issues go way beyond what anyone suspected, I think it’s reasonable for someone to suspect that he may have been involved in trafficking the stuff. For Jeff’s sake, let’s hope he’s not convicted on that charge because it carried a mandatory three to fourteen year sentence.
The next question of course becomes one about the WWE Wellness Policy. It is possible that Jeff knew he wouldn’t be facing any more Wellness tests once he finished up a few weeks ago, and was getting prepared to enjoy himself. I’m a cynic though, and I find that hard to believe, especially given his past tendency to do whatever he wants whenever he wants with no regard for how it will affect his career. Again, I don’t know anything for certain, but can a guy like Jeff just turn it on and off like that, or is WWE intentionally turning a blind eye where their main eventers are concerned, something that’s been widely suspected since the program was instituted?
Until WWE catches one of their main eventers in a Wellness violation, we don’t know for sure who, if anybody, is putting stuff in their bodies that they shouldn’t be. I want to believe that WWE really is being serious about this program, and that they’re doing everything to catch people who are doing things they shouldn’t be. But I don’t think I’m making any news by saying that there are people who have serious doubts about certain people getting bodies that don’t appear quite natural. I’m not going to name names, but I think we all know the guys I’m talking about.
If WWE is turning a blind eye, I won’t sit here and shake a finger at them and tell them they ought to be ashamed of themselves for their dishonesty, but I do think that they’re just setting themselves up for major trouble if something bad happens. They’ve already had both Eddy Guerrero and Chris Benoit pass away under questionable circumstances while working for them, so could they really be that stupid to turn a blind eye to whatever Jeff may have been doing simply because they didn’t want to disrupt their main event scene or, more importantly, the money stream he brought in?
This may sound cold, but I’m really not even concerned about this from a humanitarian standpoint because I don’t feel like WWE should be babysitting him. Jeff Hardy is a grown man and knows what he could be doing to himself by indulging in whatever he indulges in, and if he chooses to accept the consequences of those choices, that’s on him and it has nothing to do with WWE. But from WWE’s standpoint, they can’t afford another problem like they had after Benoit and Eddy. There was some very real fear that Congress was going to get involved in the business, and that’s something they were able to avoid in partt by instituting this policy. If it turns out that the policy is either a)not being strictly adhered to or b)is ineffective enough that someone else ends up dying on WWE’s watch, it’s going to turn into a much bigger problem for them than it was last time.
While Jeff Hardy may be one of those wrestlers who has fans that live and die by the ups and downs in his life, I’m not one of those people. I can appreciate what he brings as a star and a performer, but I can also separate that from what goes on in his personal life and see that he’s a guy who obviously has problems, problems that certain parties have tried to convince us over and over and over that he’s gotten past, time after time. I think that we’re all human beings and, deep down, wanted to believe that Jeff was able to overcome everything. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that nothing had changed, but I really wanted to believe it when he came back to WWE a couple of years ago and they told us he was doing well, and when they told us the same thing after both Wellness violations and also after that mysterious incident at the airport.
But in the end, it looks like nothing’s changed. I’m not upset, I certainly don’t take any satisfaction in seeing that my suspicions were valid, but I am disappointed in him because, like I said, there were a lot of people who were pulling for him. They didn’t want to see him turn into Jake Roberts, and I’m not saying that’s definitely what’s going to happen, but everyone wanted to see him overcome his issues and turn the corner.
Time will tell how this will all play out legally for Jeff, but it looks like Jeff’s hiatus from WWE just got a lot longer. WWE is very, very lucky this didn’t happen three weeks earlier, and they would be insane to bring him back anytime soon because this just confirms that for all the good things he can bring to the company, he’s also a liability, and they are going to want to think long and hard on whether he’s one they want to take another chance on.
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Speaking of guys making headlines for the wrong reasons, Rey Mysterio has gotten himself suspended for a Wellness violation, and neither he nor WWE are happy campers over the situation. For Rey’s part, he feels like the company handled the situation badly, forcing the suspension on him without allowing him adequate time to get confirmation from his doctor that he had a prescription for the painkillers he tested positive for.
Of course, he didn’t do himself any favors by going to the papers in Mexico and giving an interview where he basically blasted the company for the way they handled the situation, and WWE was very unhappy that he even did the interview in the first place, as it made them look bad and put them in a position where they feel they are at risk that other wrestlers will feel enabled to give similar interviews.
I find it hard to believe it whenever a wrestler says anything suggesting that the results of the tests are either incorrect or that someone in power is manipulating the results to hurt them. WWE has enough other ways to get rid of someone if they want to without having to resort to something like that. Rey’s story was that he came back from doing overseas promotional work to discover that he had been suspended without being given adequate time to provide a valid prescription. I don’t believe that for a second. For one, if Rey needed a prescription from his doctor in a hurry, it wouldn’t take him 24 hours to do so. Also, I can’t believe that even if for some reason it took slightly longer than 24 hours, WWE wouldn’t accept it. I have to believe that there’s more to this than Rey is letting on.
As for the interview with the Mexican paper, that is 100% Rey working the press to build sympathy in case he gets let go and needs to find work elsewhere. He’s got a long history in Mexico and would surely be treated very well if he went back there. But what Rey may not have remembered is that WWE is very strict about letting its performers talk to the press, and Mysterio going into business for himself definitely didn’t sit well with them. This could turn into the kind of thing where even if Mysterio comes back to work for WWE, we may be looking at him getting buried for a while to send a message to the talent that doing interviews without clearing them with the company first will not be tolerated, and doing interviews like the one Mysterio did will result in your life being made miserable.
I don’t believe for a second that WWE in any way manipulated the results or jumped the gun on the suspension just to screw Rey. He makes them tons of money through merchandise sales and is valuable in selling WWE to the Latino market, and if there’s one thing that Vince McMahon has proven over the years, it’s that he’s willing to put up with untold amounts of headaches from wrestlers if they’re making him money. I don’t think there’s anything Rey could possibly be doing that would go beyond what Vince has had to deal with from others in the past.
Is Rey trying to get himself fired? I’d say it’s a definite possibility, because some of the stuff he’s done since the violation would seem insane for anyone who wants to stay employed and in good standing. However, it would seem insane that he would actively try to be let go from a job that makes him as much money as it does. It could be that he really does have that much in the bank that he doesn’t need to work, but it still seems like a bad idea because even if he does get let go over this, leaving on bad terms could become an issue if he decided he wanted to come back somewhere down the line.
So now we come to the next question every wrestling fan asks when a WWE guy may be on his way out, and that’s whether Rey would go to TNA. I’m sure he would if they offered him the right number, but I don’t see him ending his career there. He wouldn’t be the first WWE guy to decided it might not be so bad to take a couple of years working a lighter schedule while deciding what he wants to do with his career, but I think he would look at TNA the same way Christian did, a good place to take a break from WWE while making a nice paycheck for a lighter schedule, before eventually making a WWE return once his batteries are recharged. He would definitely get pushed hard if he did go, because other than Kurt Angle and MAYBE Mick Foley, he’d be the biggest name to make the jump from WWE.
Time will tell how this will all play out, but if I had to guess I’d say that Rey’s vacation will give him time to sit home and think things over and decide that life in WWE isn’t so bad. He’ll come back, keep his mouth shut, and go about his job like before, and if he has a brain he won’t do any more unauthorized interviews. Plus, one would think he’d decide to keep a copy of his prescription handy from here on out…you know, just in case he fails any more tests.
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And this brings us to our final topic, the backstage brawl between the Big Show and the Great Khali. Big Show confronted Khali backstage about Khali using certain moves that Show feels ought to be exclusive to him as a giant. The conversation went south, and Big Show took a swing at Khali, Khali blocked, and a scuffle ensued. Big Show went down (claiming he slipped on something) and Khali got on top of him before the two were separated.
To once again follow the stream of consciousness, my first thought was that I’m glad I wasn’t one of the guys who had to try and break this up, because those are two guys I would not want to get between. My next thought was that this whole situation made the Big Show look really bad for a number of reasons. First is the obvious: he lost the fight. Guys as big as the Big Show are not guys that get in a lot of backstage fights because nobody wants to try them for obvious reasons, but he picked a fight with Khali probably expecting that he would win, and ended up embarrassing himself by losing. It’d be one thing to be so cavalier about picking a fight with nearly anyone else on the roster, but Khali’s at least as big as he is and he really should have thought twice about putting himself out there like that.
Another thing that Big Show apparently didn’t consider is that for all the jokes people make about Khali’s limited mobility and so on, the guy WAS a police officer back home in India, and even if he never got any serious trouble from anyone while on the job, you would have to think he picked up a couple of things during training. Would any of you mess with a seven and a half foot tall cop? No, me neither.
And then of course there’s the point that’s half joke, but not really: how many less moves can we really expect Khali to do? Not for nothing, but he’s not Bret Hart and it’s not like he has a deep repertoire of submission holds and reversals to fall back on. He is a giant and like all giants, he’s limited in what he can do because of his size. And like most giants over the course of wrestling history, most of his repertoire comes down to punching, chopping, chokeslams, standing on people’s chests, and yelling. Big Show didn’t innovate any of that and it shouldn’t be exclusive to him, and even though a part of me believes that he picked this fight just to be a big man and try to show off by punking Khali out, telling Khali to stop doing what little he is capable of is just unrealistic in my eyes.
Knowing how things go in that company, I would not be shocked to see Show and Khali working a feud against one another by the end of the year. WWE likes to put guys together who have real life issues with one another, and even though on the surface it would seem like they only do this out of some perverse enjoyment from making the wrestlers’ lives difficult, they also seem to do it as a test of their professionalism to make sure that they can put their personal animosity aside and do their job without issue.
And with that, this week’s episode of Numbskull Theatre comes to a close. I thank you for joining us, and with any luck common sense will return us to our regularly scheduled programming in short order. Good night.
Stu Carapola can be reached at stupwinsider@yahoo.com.
