Despite not being against a return, it seems AEW made no effort to re-sign Jeff Hardy before his contract expired earlier this month.
Jeff Hardy will go down as one of the most beloved wrestlers of the last 30 years. One half of the legendary Hardy Boyz tag team has created a Hall-of-Fame resume that has forever stamped his place, not just in tag wrestling but also as a singles competitor.
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That is why it was no surprise that AEW signed the former WWE champion when he became available in free agency back in 2022. However, while he and his brother — who was already with the company — were reunited as a team and received a solid push at first, it wasn’t long before they were reduced to a less impactful role and were often on episodes of Rampage instead of Dynamite.
The lack of a meaningful role was a major reason why Matt Hardy did not re-sign with AEW in May. While the organization and Hardy did have extensive conversations about a new deal, it seems that once he left the company had little interest in keeping his brother Jeff around.
During a recent edition of his podcast, the elder Hardy brother revealed some interesting details about how AEW handled the impending expiration of Jeff Hardy’s contract.
“As time went on, Jeff started telling me, ‘No one has reached out to me.’ ‘Are you going to reach out to them?’ The only time they offered Jeff a deal is when they offered me a deal [in May],” he said. “Jeff didn’t care. Unless they offered him something that he liked, he was good. He wasn’t going to reach out. As Jeff was saying, ‘No one has reached out, my deal might be up.’
I said, ‘I’m enjoying my time in TNA. Jeff isn’t looking to re-sign, no one has reached out, Jeff doesn’t feel like he’s necessarily wanted there.’ Jeff is an interesting cat. He thinks differently. If someone is not trying to reach out to him, ‘Hey, we really want to do this.’ If you’re sitting back or not trying to contact, he goes, ‘Well, they must not want me. I’ll move on,'” Hardy said.
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With Matt making the move to TNA for a short-term deal, it opened the door for Jeff to return to the company. Which he did earlier this month at Against All Odds. Matt also revealed that he and his brother are still available for other bookings and their deal with TNA is only for the next few months. But they would be open to a longer deal if it were offered.
While having them together has value, Jeff Hardy is the bigger name so it is surprising they were not interested in having that value on the show with television ratings being so poor recently.
