Jeff Hardy may have got his old entrance music back, but WWE really hasn't gone to great lengths to push him as a top star. It was only a few weeks ago that he was running around the ring on RAW with the rest of the 24/7 Championship jobbers, and a brief feud with Austin Theory has seen Hardy pick up more losses.
Needless to say, it's beginning to look like he made a major mistake signing a new deal with WWE instead of following his brother, Matt, to AEW.
During a recent interview with Ryan Satin, Hardy acknowledged that "it's my time to give back," but added that "I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be wrestling, almost like a darker side of Jeff Hardy, I think, needs to come out. I haven’t figured it out yet, but I’ve had these crazy ideas. It’s my time to focus more on the character stuff instead of the high flying moves, the TLC matches, and all of that stuff. I think there’s something that’s waiting to be unleashed within me."
As for what comes next, Hardy once again expressed interest in being a heel in WWE and bringing back his Willow character. "When I did the anti-Christ [of wrestling] thing [in TNA]...it’s really hard to make people hate me," he said. "I think it would have to be done in a different way, but it would be something that I’ve never really dived into before."
"I would be lying if I said that I don’t think about Willow all the time, especially when I saw The Fiend in real life and how cool that was. That naturally got my wheels spinning. I’ve always talked about bringing Willow into WWE with a black wedding dress and all these images I have in my head. He looks awesome, he can do all this cool stuff in the ring, but where does it go? What’s the longevity behind it all? That’s what I’m still trying to work out in my imagination."
With the odd exception, when wrestlers like Jeff Hardy start getting that little bit older, WWE Chairman Vince McMahon stops seeing the value in them. With that in mind, it's hard to believe Willow or anything significant is planned for the former WWE Champion, but time is going to tell on that front.