Matt Hardy has confirmed that his brother Jeff was originally supposed to win the Money In The Bank briefcase back at WrestleMania 24.
The Broken One discussed this topic during the latest edition of his Extreme Life of Matt Hardy podcast, where he also reveals why Jeff’s plans got scrapped, adding yet another disappointing chapter into his battle with drug addiction. Highlights from the episode can be found below.
Says that Jeff Hardy was scheduled to win the MITB briefcase at WrestleMania 24:
Matt fact. Yes, he was. That was the plan. He was gonna win this Money in the Bank briefcase, and I think at this point, they had pulled the trigger and decided they wanted to try and turn him into the champion. I know Freddie Prinze had been given this edict, like ‘Get Jeff Hardy ready for the championship.’ That’s like around the time too when he was starting to paint his face again if I’m not mistaken. They started leaning into some stuff that was very Jeff Hardy-ish, and Freddie Prinze was kind of leading that charge in many ways.
Jeff got caught taking some type of substance in Mexico which is why his big win was delayed:
But yeah, Jeff was in Mexico on an international tour, and at some point there, he ended up taking something, some sort of pill or substance for, I don’t know if it was his back or whatever it was,” Matt added. “But he did end up getting popped on a drug test, and one of the things I remember he told me from the story, Michael Hayes had called him at home. He said, ‘Hey, what is going on here? I can’t believe you did all this,’ and whatever. He said, ‘Vince is gonna call you in a few minutes, so be ready to answer the phone.’ Then I guess Vince called him, and Jeff’s like, ‘Hello?’ He’s like, ‘What the fuck have you done?’ That was his greeting right from the beginning. I guess they talked it through, and at the end of the conversation, Jeff said they spoke for a while, they seemed to be kosher. Jeff apologized and regretted making that mistake, but it was what it was.
Admits to being very sad that his brother had that setback:
It was very sad. Disappointing, but also, he’s a human being, and he’s had issues throughout his life with that. It doesn’t mean that he has a terrible content of character. It means that he has addiction problems, obviously. So just very disappointed, especially when he had so much good stuff going on professionally in his life at that time. So it was a very sad and disappointing setback for him.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)