JANUARY 9, 2011 UPDATE – On the first live show of 2011, a Pay-Per-View showcase, Hardy dropped the title to #1 Contender Mr. Anderson. It was the first opportunity TNA had since the plea news broke to move the title off Hardy and to a different wrestler.
I’ve railed on Total Nonstop Wrestling in this space several times in the past for their…interesting…decisions.
TNA World Champion Jeff Hardy is expected to plead guilty to drug charges next month.
Professional wrestling is an entertainment form. The outcomes are pre-determined, the moves are designed to be as pain-free as possible, but the athleticism and charisma are off the charts.
In this realm, where the promoters choose the winners and losers, TNA put their championship on Rob Van Dam, a noted..even celebrated…marijuana user, earlier this year.
And they hired Jeff Hardy, a talented performer who’s drug use had forced him out of World Wrestling Entertainment on more than one occasion. Despite pending felony drug charges, TNA even chose to make him their World Champion!
Despite multiple chances to take the belt off of him as the case progressed, they never took the belt off of him. They even altered their TV taping schedule to allow him to fly from Orlando to his home state of North Carolina for a date in court.
This is a major company, with touring, domestic and international TV, pay-per-view, DVDs, merchandise and more.
They chose to allow the face of their company to be a guy facing drug charges.
They definitely rolled the dice.
And today, it came up as snake-eyes.
The Charlotte Observer is reporting that Jeff Hardy will plead guilty to drug charges in court next month.
And because of the way TNA has taped their TV shows, there is absolutely nothing they can do about this for two weeks.
Good work, TNA…your champion is pleading guilty to felony drug charges. While WWE, the worldwide leader, is getting tons of positive mainstream coverage with their recent Tribute to the Troops show, former reality star Mike Mizanin as champion and finances that get better each quarter, your champion faces jail time.
You see, in wrestling, the matches may be fake, but this PR fail is very, very real.
[...] Several months back, we discussed Total Nonstop Action Wrestling champion Jeff Hardy, who was given the belt in the fictional storyline of wrestling despite the real-life drug troubles of the performer. [...]
[...] I covered that situation in detail here. [...]