Third Strike

WWE.com had a story on its main page yesterday breaking the news that Jeff Hardy had been found unconscious in the hotel he had been staying in.

I didn't read this article at first.

The initial moment I heard of this was on a message board. Everyone on the board were talking of this being the straw that broke the camel's back as - had this been a drug overdose - Hardy would have struck his third and final drug offence in the company.

I decided to look a little further into the story and headed to WWE.com. The front page lead-in made me realise it was a work as it speculated whether he would be fit to make his WWE title match at Survivor Series later that day.

The thing about this angle is - the majority of people who actually read it thought it was legit. They had grown used to the website breaking news such as the deaths of Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit so placing this story in a similar context would have been received as being honest and accurate.

It wasn't just the wrestling fans who believed the story.

A number of news outlets also ran with the story. It should be noted, however, that the AOL.com article that I read used the word 'reportedly' so they may have been suspicious that this was all a work.

I think WWE should be ashamed of themselves for doing something like this. I know we're talking about a genre where everything is meant to be a work but they used the same platform to break kayfabe when reality struck.

Using the same approach to incorporate a storyline muddies the water and can lead to a 'boy who cried wolf' type reaction the next time reality rears its head.

Remember, karma has had a tendency to haunt WWE in the past. The worrying thing about that is, they didn't seem to have learned from the Benoit lesson.