Jeff Hardy spent the majority of his summer feuding with Sheamus on WWE television in an angle that was heavily criticized by many observers.
WWE used Hardy's real-life issues with abuse in the feud with Sheamus constantly harping on Hardy for his past addictions. While fans were upset over many of the segments, Hardy always believed in the story they were telling.
"The stuff with Sheamus that's happened most recently, I knew there was a great outcome in it. I knew that bar fight was going to be cinematic and good," Jeff told Matty Paddock of the Daily Star. "All the stuff building up to that match, I just knew the outcome was going to be fantastic. And it's good to face challenges like that because there's so much negativity in the world. I'm not a social media guy at all, I don't read comments or the negativity of people who thought it was wrong or that [WWE] were treating me [badly], I don't read any of that. I'm just confident in myself to get through it, and when I get a feeling that something's going to be good, I just run with it. There was some heavy stuff there in the beginning, especially with the wreck scenario. It was just very heavy stuff. I'm always interested as everybody is different in so far as how the viewer feels watching at home, especially hardcore fans of mine. Even thinking back to the stuff with CM Punk when I was failing drugs tests, they turned it into a storyline and that's what I mean when I talk about roller-coasters of good and bad. Throughout all of that, so long as I can continue to do good, especially with this, my last chance to get it right, it is going to inspire people around the world that I'll never meet, that need to stay sober to survive. Hopefully I'm doing that through the television screen and helping people I'll never know."
The feud between Hardy and Sheamus ended in a Bar Fight, which was won by Hardy.
Jeff revealed in the interview that he actually wrote an entire script for the fight, though much of it wasn't used.
"When the idea of the bar match was thrown out there, I wrote up a whole script of how the match would possibly go. Most of it never happened, but I do love [doing] that. A lot of that stuff I said in that first meeting of me and Sheamus in the bar was stuff I actually wrote... it felt good to have ideas that they liked and bring them to life, just from being involved in the recovery world," he said.
Jeff not only overcame Sheamus, but he went on to win the Intercontinental Title from AJ Styles on the most recent episode of WWE SmackDown.
