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| He can steal the show without killing himself Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Obviously, Hardy had made the conscious choice to deal with his pain by popping pills, and he didn't have the self-control to take the recommended dose at the recommended time interval. There's no denying that he bears personal responsibility for how his life ended up at that event over two years ago. To his credit, he's kept his nose clean since then, at least publicly. We all have to take some kind of accountability for ourselves.
But Hardy's job, first and foremost, was to entertain fans. Hardy nearly killing himself in matches, big or otherwise, was for his job. It was for our entertainment. So, the question is then asked whether we, as fans, should have his drug habits on our conscience. That's a dangerous question to ask, because it assumes everyone wanted Hardy to risk his body in bumps that cannot be braced for in even the same way that the simple, flat-back bump can (and even a "simple" back bump takes an amazing toll on a wrestler's body). There would have to be some evidence that Hardy tried to work a "safer" style and got readily jeered for it. I honestly don't have the memory for that.
However, there are examples of certain sects of fans who shit all over anything that is out of the "norm" for them. There doesn't seem to be a safer style of wrestling than World of Sport mat grappling exchanges, but when Colt Cabana and Nigel McGuinness partook in a chain of counters during a Ring of Honor taping at the ECW Arena, fans chanted boring. Mick Foley was a heel in ECW and Drew Gulak is a heel in Combat Zone Wrestling because they denounced the relatively unsafe hardcore style. That's a small sample size, definitely, but a vocal minority can seem deafening to wrestlers.
That makes me wonder if guys in WWE right now like Dolph Ziggler, Seth Rollins, Alberto del Rio, Rey Mysterio, and yes, Daniel Bryan only hear select voices when they decide they want to test the limits of the Ziggler Scale in any given match. I appreciate the ethos behind those decisions to bump huge in even C-show matches. A great wrestler wants to make his or her opponent look as good as possible. However, going from the ring to the floor, hard into the ringpost through tables, and into barricades are not bumps designed to be taken on every show. Ziggler and Rollins especially seem to specialize in taking more than one of those bumps in any match, so much so that I'm absolutely shocked that Ziggler's concussion was not only the first major injury of his career, but also came on something as banal as a Jack Swagger kick.
But just because there might be a vocal minority who'll shit on them if they don't kill themselves on every match, I don't think it means they'd be any less of a cult of personality if they played it safe in a few matches here and there. Bryan especially is perhaps the most nuclear star in WWE right now. I think he of anyone should know how to bump smarter. The same goes for Rollins (member of the best stable in recent WWE history), Ziggler (massively charismatic in his own right), Mysterio (cemented legendary status at end of his career), and del Rio (WWE's next big Latino star). They don't have to be Hardy. They don't have to have the giant bump be the only thing going for them.
But even Hardy had a lot more going for him than just jumping off heights into hard objects. He still does. He's a free spirit who speaks to kids. There are always going to be fans who want to see the car crash all the time, but this isn't a tube of toothpaste. It can be put back into the container very easily by scaling back the giant bumps and letting them become memorable again. These wrestlers are more in control of their bodies and actions than they realize. If they don't want to end up like Jeff Hardy, then they should start, as a collective, finding a way to sell on an everyday basis that doesn't involve them pegging the Ziggler Scale.
