Jeff Hardy On Which Legends Inspired His Face-Paint, Current Look Being A Modified Brother Nero
Before his match against Randy Orton at WWE Hell In A Cell this past Sunday, Jeff Hardy spoke with Brian Campbell from CBS's In This Corner Podcast where he discussed his signature "juke" dance move, crediting Michael Hayes's charisma as its origin. Hardy also talked about Sting being a huge influence on his career, specifically for the detailed face-paint that inspired Jeff to start painting his face for matches.
"I was a combination of Sting and the Ultimate Warrior," Hardy said. "Sting at the time was in NWA, or when it became WCW, and the Warrior was in WWE. The Warrior was crazy but Sting's would be different every night when he was the blonde haired Sting, and that's what I loved about him I was like 'How does he come up with these ideas?' And I saw him one night in Fayetteville, North Carolina and the music came on and I reached out and touched him on the shoulder and I'll never forget feeling... like I want to make somebody feel like he made me feel. Here I am, hopefully, having the same influence on young, up-and-coming, wannabe wrestlers."
On the topic of face-paint, Campbell asked Hardy how his incarnation of the Jeff Hardy character has adapted since his return to the WWE and what the paint does to enhance that. Hardy explains that it's almost an altered version of Brother Nero from his TNA days.
"It's a lot of work," Hardy said. "I think it's a modified Brother Nero, because you know naturally when Matt became 'Woken' it was a little different than Broken. So I think this is my version of the new Brother Nero and it's gonna only evolve more. That's why I broke out the white contacts, I figured why not?"
Hardy talked more about his current look, and how it takes him nearly 45 minutes to apply his face-paint every night. Hardy also revealed how he came up with painting his eyelids.
"I did it in a YouTube video years ago," Hardy exclaimed. "I thought to myself, 'I should do this when I come out to the ring.' I had this vision and then I started doing it in TNA years ago and I was working my butt off every night. Doing an Instagram picture would be different every night. So to be here in WWE doing it now it's very surreal to me, and that people are actually digging it, it's only going to get better."
Source: In This Corner Podcast