Jeff Hardy was arrested in the early hours of June 13 on multiple charges, including a DUI charge making it the AEW wrestler’s 3rd offense in 10 years.
Hardy was arrested in Volusia County, Fla., and per the county’s corrections website, Hardy was booked on three charges: Violating restrictions placed on driver’s license; driving while license was canceled/suspended/revoked; and DUI related to drugs or alcohol. The substance related to the DUI was not listed. A combined bond for the charges was set for $3,500.
Marc Middleton of Wrestling Headlines notes, “The license charges are second-degree misdemeanors, while the DUI is a third-degree felony,” due to the DUI being Hardy’s 3rd offense within 10 years.
Hardy was set to take part in a Triple Threat Ladder Match with brother/tag team partner Matt Hardy against The Young Bucks and AEW World Tag Team Champions Jurassic Express on this week’s episode of AEW Dynamite airing live on TBS this Wednesday, June 15. As of publishing, no changes have been made to this match.
Jeff Hardy debuted in AEW in March following being released from WWE in December 2021 stemming from an incident at house show where Hardy disappeared from ringside during a six-man tag match where he teamed with Drew McIntyre and Xavier Woods. Following this incident, there were many that speculated whether Hardy had some sort of relapse in his sobriety, which has been an on-going issue in his career for decades.
Wrestling Inc. would report during a January stream on Twitch, Matt Hardy said related to the incident, “Whenever my brother ended up being released, he had taken a drug test. And usually these drug tests come back in 10 to 14 days. You’ll get the sheet that says ‘you are compliant and you were negative on everything.’ Those 10 to 14 days had been up for him, and he never got a result, and he was very curious of where his result was because he knew he had passed his drug test because he hadn’t been doing drugs.”
Matt continued, “He’s been clean, he’s been clean the whole while he has been there. I know there was an issue, they said ‘Jeff Hardy had this erratic behavior. He jumped over the guardrail or whatever.’ But look, it’s Jeff Hardy. He’s a weird dude, it’s kind of what he does. The erratic behavior is why they gave him the drug test and they sent him home.”
Matt added, “Working with WWE is a very stressful job. And I am not going to say that I am here to bury WWE, because I love WWE. The WWE and Vince McMahon and everybody who’s there, I wouldn’t be who I am, I wouldn’t have this life that I have right now. So I have a great appreciation…It’s all good. But it’s also a very stressful environment as well. Anybody who has worked there knows that. So I feel like Jeff was kind of stressed out in many different ways by several different things. And he just told me when he went over that guardrail, he knew he was done. He was done there. He was literally done with the match, so he felt done.”