Ahead of this Sunday’s WWE SummerSlam 2018 pay-per-view at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, Jeff Hardy spoke with the European market to promote the big event. Featured below are some of the highlights.
On what happened backstage to bring back his famous facepaint: “I think right when I came back from rotator cuff surgery Michael Hayes or somebody asked, ‘hey do you want to paint your face again?’ was like, ‘Yeah! Of course, I do! I’d love to!
“So I guess the whole thing winning the United States Championship and heading forward it was like, ‘maybe we’ll let him do his own thing since he’s not with Matt.’ Because I asked several times with Matt and they wouldn’t let me do it on TV, I just did it at the live events. It was kinda weird. I think it’s one of those things that’s definitely better to do when I’m doing my singles stuff.”
On being excited to show off the extra facepaint on his eyelids, ala his Impact Wrestling character, in WWE: “That eyelid thing is really tough [to apply] it’s challenging, but once I’ve seen what I created it’s all worth it. When I painted my face in ’08-’09 back in the day, I hadn’t come up with that yet. So it’s cool to be here in WWE — because I did it in TNA for so long and it was so cool and I had dreams of doing it here and here we are.”
On not using the same entrance music as his last WWE run and why he was forced to switch things up: “If we could get ‘No More Words’ back but the band evidently broke up. A lot of people thought that I sung that song, but that was Endeverafter’s song, but I miss that dearly. I know a lot of my fans want to hear that more than anything. Because in my opinion, it’s better to save that Hardy Boyz music for the Hardy Boyz. I don’t feel comfortable using it, but I’m not going to complain.
“It might be time to do something completely fresh. But I definitely more than anything right now what’s missing from the Jeff Hardy character on SmackDown is my own entrance music. I need something new and fresh if I don’t get to use ‘No More Words.'”
(H/T to WrestlingInc.com for transcribing the above quotes.)