Jeff Hardy finally grabs the brass ring

WWE

New WWE champ Jeff Hardy.

Not many people saw it coming when Jeff Hardy won the WWE championship last weekend, but Matt Hardy wasn’t one of them.

The eldest Hardy brother hinted at a possible title run for Jeff during an interview a few weeks ago.

“I think WWE will pull the trigger on him. I hope they do because it’s something he totally deserves. He’s sacrificed his body and everything he has for the professional wrestling/sports entertainment business through WWE. I think it’ll happen sooner rather than later. Jeff has really grown up and matured a lot inside.”

WWE is banking on that last statement.

One of the most popular performers on the WWE roster, Jeff also is one of the most unpredictable ones, with two violations of the company’s wellness policy on his record. A third would mean termination.

Matt, however, said in that interview that his brother was “in a great place in his life” and that he had absolutely no worries about him. Admitting that wasn’t the case just a few years ago, and that Jeff still finds it difficult living within a structured system, Matt called his brother a free-spirited risk-taker who doesn’t worry about the consequences. It also happens to be a big part of his allure.

The North Carolina-born brothers, who now hold two of the three major world titles in WWE, have come a long way since their days working as dark-match enhancement talent for the company.

Two of their biggest fans, the Carolina Panthers’ highly touted running-back tandem of DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart, praised the Hardys in a recent Yahoo Sports interview.

“Those are my guys,” said Williams.

— You don’t tug on Superman’s cape ... you don’t spit into the wind ... and you don’t mess around with Joey?

That’s right, Joey Styles, the former voice of ECW, who gained a whopping measure of respect from the locker room when he slugged John Bradshaw Layfield during WWE’s recent tour of Iraq for the Tribute to the Troops show. It seems that Joey, who stands 5-8 and weighs less than 175 pounds, wasn’t too amused when WWE’s resident bully began harassing and picking on him. Tempers flared, and the normally mild-mannered Styles, who now works as WWE’s director of digital content, retaliated with a haymaker that left the 6-6 JBL bloody and with a black eye.

The two immediately were pulled apart, but the incident left JBL, who has a reputation of hazing talent and pulling ribs behind closed doors, more than just a little embarrassed. No official reprimands were announced.

Provided

JBL knocked out by Joey Styles in Iraq.

— I’m not sure about JBL giving Shawn Michaels any “financial” advice, but HBK might want to check with Layfield’s better half, Meredith Whitney, who is considered one of the most influential stock analysts in the industry and is credited for calling Wall Street’s meltdown.

“It feels like I’m at the epicenter of the biggest financial crisis in history,” the Oppenheimer & Co. analyst said well before the problems in September that befell Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers. Whitney, in fact, warned last year that the “incestuous” relationship between the banks and the credit-rating agencies during the real estate bubble would have a long-lasting impact on banks’ ability to recover.

JBL, who once authored a book titled “Have More Money Now,” was the subject of a recent Forbes Magazine story related to the Top 15 richest fictional characters. Such notables in the tongue-in-cheek list included Uncle Sam, Gordon Gekko and Thurston Howell III.

JBL’s in-ring persona, that of a mega-millionaire tycoon who rides to the ring in a limo and claims to be married to the most powerful woman on Wall Street, isn’t that much of a stretch. He’s done very well as an investor and financial commentator (as well as in the wrestling business), is married to a very powerful woman on Wall Street and really did move from Texas to New York.

AP

Mickey Rourke (right), star of “The Wrestler,” poses with former pro wrestler Greg “The Hammer” Valentine at the premiere of the film at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Dec. 16.

— Veteran actor Mickey Rourke gives the performance of a lifetime in Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler.” The gritty, moving character study has been called one of the best movies of the year, bound for an Oscar nomination, and critics have heaped praise on the actor for his role as a broken-down, steroid-pumped pro wrestler who is still clinging to his glory days.

Rourke stars as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, an over-the-hill grappler still climbing into the ring 20 years past his prime, worn down by years of beatings and painkillers.

The 52-year-old Rourke, who was trained for the movie by WWE Hall of Famer Afa the Wild Samoan (Afa Anoa’i), bulked up to 230 pounds for the film. He was helped by what he calls “vitamin supplements.” The movie’s brutal scenes took such a toll on the actor that he was unable to attend the wrap party following three MRIs and a blown-out L5 in his back.

The movie is now playing in theaters in Los Angeles and in New York and on Dec. 26 it will be available in other theaters in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. It rolls out to hundreds of other theaters across the nation on Jan. 9, 16 and 23.

Fox Searchlight held the premiere of “The Wrestler” on Tuesday at the Academy Of Motion Arts & Sciences in Beverly Hills. The cast of the movie, led by Rourke, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood, was joined on the red carpet by a number of wrestling celebrities including Ric Flair, Roddy Piper, Greg Valentine and Brutus Beefcake.

— Linda Hogan (Bollea), estranged wife of Hulk Hogan (Terry Bollea), was involved in a minor car accident Friday near her home in Clearwater, Fla. No one reportedly was injured in the fender-bender. The accident occurred less than a quarter of a mile from where her son, Nick, crashed in August 2007.

Hogan’s white Mercedes reportedly was rear-ended by a red Camaro. Her car suffered only “minor” damage.

WWE might want to consider bringing back The Slammys on an annual basis. Its recent three-hour Slammy edition edged out ESPN’s Monday Night Football game and enabled USA Network to reclaim the top spot in the cable TV rankings for the week of Dec. 8-14. Each of the three hours of Raw from Dec. 8 finished in the top six most-watched cable shows for the week.

— The Los Angeles Times recently credited WWE’s Smackdown show for helping boost MyNetwork TV’s ratings. The network’s Friday night numbers are up 150 percent compared to last year, the newspaper reported, with overall ratings up 39 percent. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox are all down compared with last year.

The article also noted that increasing competition, expensive programming and the Internet are making it tough for a network such as MyNetwork to compete.

— WWE and WGN America, the Chicago-based superstation, have reached an agreement to create a new weekly, one-hour prime-time series titled WWE Superstars that will debut in April 2009. No time slot or format has been announced.

WWE

WWE diva Maria.

— WWE diva Maria (Maria Kanellis) commented on her past relationship with C.M. Punk (Phil Brooks) in a New York-based radio interview last week. She said the two broke up because of wrestling.

“It’s one of those things where you’re both competing for time” she said. “Just when you go home, you don’t want to talk wrestling anymore.”

Maria, 26, said she currently dates someone outside the wrestling business. “Looking for someone who’s going to treat me like a lady and not like one of the boys.”

— Former WWE star Bobby Lashley recently told the Miami Herald that a match between him and UFC champ Brock Lesnar is inevitable.

“I am a wrestler, and Brock is a wrestler,” Lashley said. “If (Lesnar) wants to match skills, we match skills. There is going to be a meeting between me and Brock. There will be.”

Lashley defeated Joshua Franklin in his MMA debut last weekend in Miami. The fight was stopped less than a minute in when Lashley opened a nasty cut on his opponent’s forehead.

— Frankie Kazarian, who has been appearing in TNA as Suicide, suffered a biceps injury at recent TNA tapings and is expected to be sidelined for an undisclosed period of time.

— Tyson Tomko, who recently re-signed with WWE after a two-year absence, is already on the shelf with a torn pectoral muscle. Rumors already have circulated that Tomko’s latest stint in WWE may be short-lived.

Reach Mike Mooneyham at (843) 937-5517 or [email protected]. For wrestling updates during the week, call The Post and Courier Info Line at (843) 937-6000, ext. 3090.