The second disc of the Hardyz “Twist of Fate” DVD concentrates on Jeff, as you might have deciphered if you read my review of part 1 which was on Matt.

If you’ve not yet read part 1, you can do so here.

It says something about Jeff that his DVD starts not with a bunch of highlight clips and a voiceover saying how great he is, but with comments on the death of his mother. But what on the surface seems like a very downcast note to begin a documentary ends up being really inspirational, with quotes from Jeff’s poetry being read and him commenting on how it allowed him to be a free spirit like she was.

I think it says a lot about Jeff’s character that he can take one of the worst things that can happen to somebody and use it in a positive manner in his life.

As I have a couple of negative points to make about this documentary I may as well get them out of the way first. Their years growing up are covered extensively in Matt’s documentary, and here you feel like you are going over a lot of the same material.

They watched WrestleMania IV and that changed them from people who would watch wrestling to guys who knew it was what they wanted to do with their lives. They get a trampoline in their backyard, then put on their own shows, leading to the creation of OMEGA. The OMEGA clips see them doing the kind of highspots they later became famous for in WWE.

Also, a lot of time is focused here on Jeff’s life outside the ring, which some people may find boring. The woods around his house which he converted into a motocross track are shown in detail, as are his artwork, sculptures and work with his band. It’s interesting to get a look at Jeff’s life, but I understand it might be time to skip the chapter for some people.

The days as television jobbers in WWE in the mid-1990s are touched on a little more in Jeff’s documentary than it was in Matt’s. This may be down to Jeff’s bumps being more spectacular, and there are clips of a match he had with Owen Hart that I will be trawling YouTube and dailymotion for over the next few days.

Shawn Michaels comments that the Hardyz were the guys everybody wanted to work squash matches with. Jeff had to lie about his age to get the gig here, as he was only 16 at the time of his first jobber squash with Razor Ramon.

The TLC era gets heavily praised, including JBL calling it the “golden age” of tag team wrestling, which it certainly was especially when compared with today. Clips are shown of several of Jeff’s jaw-dropping highspots, and Jeff explains his philosophy on those crazy highspots as wanting to do the one thing that people remember after the show.

He’s certainly managed to do that for most of his career, since whenever Jeff does something breathtaking it really is what people talk about more often than not.

When talk moves onto the breakup of the tag team, Jeff doesn’t really have much to say besides talking about his ladder match with The Undertaker. It certainly was a big night in Jeff’s career even though it didn’t lead to very much on a long-term basis. And the reason for that is that he was burned out and wanted to do other things.

I thought they were speaking in code for a minute until Jim Ross and Hardy both talk about Jeff leaving because of drug issues.

Hardy tries to paint this as deliberately failing in order to get out, and to be honest if it was anyone else saying that I’d be calling bullshit. But with Jeff Hardy and everything I’ve ever heard about him, I can totally believe it. He talks about wanting to get back into wrestling and therefore he went to TNA for the reduced schedule, and eventually he got back to WWE.

The DVD ends on a really positive note as Jeff talks about facing Edge in his comeback match and how people responded to him with the normal main event reaction that he always got, regardless of where he is placed on the card. Then everyone talks about how Jeff has been better than ever recently and the future is bright for him. Of course, he then went and got suspended for a Wellness Policy failure, but let’s not mention that.

Disc 2 DVD Extras:

The Hardy Boyz v. The Dudley Boyz at Royal Rumble 2000 in a Tables Match. This definitely deserves a place on the DVD, and is as much a forerunner to the TLC matches as the No Mercy 1999 ladder match was. Probably moreso in fact, judging by the vicious chairshots being delivered here and ladder involvement in a tables match.

It’s historically significant, it’s important to the career of the team, and on top of that it is damn entertaining. The camera missing the Event OMEGA that drove Bubba through the first table is a rare production slip-up that you don’t tend to find in WWE, and even the replay was from a bad angle.

I know in the years since these matches happened people have talked about how they “don’t hold up” but to me that’s bollocks. These four guys didn’t go out there with the intention of having a match that someone will sit and watch in 8 years time and see lots of hidden depths in there that they failed to spot before.

They went out there to put on a spectacular show that will have the crowd going mental, building to a spectacular finish that will be talked about for years. And they achieved that in spades. It’s incredibly entertaining even if it is very much “of the time” in terms of some of what they did - if a little too “old ECW” in terms of guys taking unprotected chairshots and diving through tables then being back in the match right away.

The ending is something you have probably already seen on highlight packages even if you’ve never seen the match. Jeff and Bubba fight up onto a ledge overlooking the entrance ramp, and Bubba sells a Jeff chairshot by going limp and dropping back through two tables, then Jeff hits a swanton bomb off the ledge driving D-Von through a table for the win.

Jeff Hardy v. Triple H on the April 12th 2001 episode of SmackDown. For a Jeff Hardy match right at the end of the TLC spectacular highspot era, this is awfully boring.

I completely understand that at the time Triple H was a dominant main event heel and Jeff was a tag team wrestler, but does that mean endless sleeperholds, punches and not much else for 10 minutes until Triple H beats up a referee, Matt runs in and hits Hunter with the chair allowing Jeff to hit the swanton for the win?

It’s Jeff’s first big singles title win, but I don’t think that would have been enough to include it here if not for who Jeff’s opponent was.

Jeff Hardy v. Johnny Nitro at New Years Revolution 2007 in a Steel Cage Match. One thing that this set really opened my eyes to is that the Hardyz are both really great cage match wrestlers.

I know I definitely watched this show because I remember being on wrestlemag and raving about how great the Cena-Umaga main event was, as well as Triple H tearing his quad on this show. But I had very little memory of this match, and to be honest I have no idea why because it’s excellent.

It’s amazing to think that steel cage matches have been around for decades and here these two still managed to do a lot of innovative spots that I’ve not seen before, such as Nitro dropkicking the top rope as Jeff is climbing, which meant Jeff fell down and got trapped in between the ropes and cage.

I had forgotten how annoying Melina’s screaming was at ringside, and not in a “being a good heel manager” kind of way either. Although to be fair she did plenty of stuff that does fit into “good heel manager” including whipping the cage as Hardy climbs and her general reactions at ringside during the match.

This was a fresh match, with clever spots, great heat, an excellent heel, a babyface everyone loves, several teased finishes (I don’t remember another time that Jeff hit the swanton bomb in the ring and it wasn’t the ending) and good drama. They ripped off the Chris Jericho-Sean Waltman ending with Nitro crotching himself on the cage door as Jeff kicked it out while Nitro was climbing over the top.

Jeff Hardy v. Shelton Benjamin on the February 26th 2007 edition of Monday Night Raw. I’ve no idea why this is on here.

It’s a really boring ten minute singles match, the highlight of which is Shelton fucking up the ending, proving just why he’s a midcarder for life. Even if you’re not a Jeff Hardy fan, I don’t know if you could ever say his matches are boring, which is just a sign of how bad Shelton is.

Until he went for his springboard deal and fell off the top rope I was struggling not to hit the fast forward button here. This is nothing more than a bad match that meant nothing in the wider framework of Jeff’s career. It’s not even like the HHH SmackDown match where at least he won a title and was in their with a major star, it’s inclusion baffles me.

The Hardy Boyz v. Lance Cade & Trevor Murdoch at Judgement Day 2007. Now the set gets back on track in a major way. This match got very little buzz after the show online, and having watched it I really don’t know why as it’s excellent.

The Hardyz were working their reunion as a tag team, and were basically pushed as genuine superstars, almost Gods of tag team wrestling. Cade and Murdoch were heels who wanted to play by the rules, which of course was paid off on a later show by them cheating to screw over the Hardyz and win the tag titles.

In their prime, the Hardyz were a team who became famous for being jaw-droppingly spectacular to the point that they went through a stage of being derided as “spot monkeys.” Therefore, it is really great to see on here, in contrast to the tables match, a match where they essentially work a simple old school tag team match based on getting heat and building to a hot tag, with a spectacular finish that sent the crowd home happy.

Also, Trevor Murdoch did a Canadian Destroyer, which is definitely a sight to see.

Jeff Hardy v. Triple H at Armageddon 2007. This was the start of Jeff’s main event push that lasted over the next few months before his Wellness failure.

They had built this on TV as a double babyface match with the guys having respect for each other, and that’s played up with some cool character stuff early on. Jeff stops himself in attempting to punch Hunter, who slaps him in the face and yells at him to fight. So Jeff upped the pace and hit some of his early-match spots such as the low dropkick to the midsection, before slapping Hunter back.

Then for the next several minutes it’s like I went back in a time machine to their 2001 match, but I won’t hark on about that too much because the last several minutes do a very effective job of building up Hardy and scripting the match so that he is seen on Hunter’s level. He had moves countered, but then would counter back and hit the move later, showing that although Hunter is still a top guy, Jeff is right there with him.

The nearfalls towards the end were done really well, and they even avoided Hunter having the get-out of kicking out of the swanton, as Jeff missed the move here, before countering the pedigree by tripping HHH and doing a jacknife leverage pin.

While this set doesn’t need two Jeff v. Triple H matches, if it was just going to have one it should’ve been this one, as it did a far better job of treating Jeff like a star rather than some midcarder getting a fluke win.

Jeff Hardy v. Umaga on the January 7th 2008 episode of Monday Night Raw in a Steel Cage Match. This is the perfect choice to end the matches section of Jeff’s DVD. Umaga and Hardy are probably each other’s best singles opponents, to the point where even if they are only given two minutes it’s still as good a two minute match as you are ever likely to see.

When he is protected by booking, Umaga is an excellent monster heel, and Jeff is excellent at taking bumps and doing spectacular comebacks. When you add in a steel cage stipulation, that means Jeff can take ever more spectacular bumps, Umaga can be ever more brutal, and Jeff’s comeback can include more spectacular highspots. Add to the fact that it was a heavily pushed main event and you get an excellent match with a big-match feel.

This was in the leadup to Hardy’s WWE Title shot at Randy Orton, so Orton is at ringside here. It’s a shame he’s so great as a top heel wrestler in a way, because here he shows that he could be a great manager, better than anything in wrestling right now. His verbal interactions with Hardy and Umaga were both great, he interfered once in a key spot rather than running in and doing so much that it makes the guys in the match look weak, and his facial reactions, particularly to the spectacular ending, really helped get it over as a major moment.

With Hardy at the top of the cage, Orton stood on the floor blocking his way out, and Jeff delivered a Whisper In The Wind on Umaga from the top of the cage for the pin. I cannot think of a better way to end the matches section of a Jeff Hardy DVD than a major highspot in a gimmick match that you can really point to as THE moment where everyone bought him as a main event player.

With all due respect to Kurt Angle and Samoa Joe who had a really good cage match, and with no respect whatsoever to Randy Orton and Triple H who had a painfully average one, this is definitely the best cage match of 2008 so far.

There are two additional DVD extras included. The first is very tragic, as Jeff and Matt talk about their dogs and how close they are, almost like animal versions of those two as humans. It was so sweet, and so sad at the same time since after this was filmed Jeff’s dog Jack was killed in the fire that burned down Jeff’s home in February of this year. Also shown is a music video of highlights from Jeff’s career, set to one of his own songs.

There are also two DVD Easter Eggs here. Not much worth watching however. Click left on “singles release” on the chapter menu and Jeff talks about a bulldozer accident that destroyed his studio. Click right on “imagination” and Matt talks about his aluminium sculptures.

Overall I have to say that I recommend this set. It’s strange in a way to have a career retrospective at a point for both guys when they still have so much to achieve. For instance they both talked about winning World Titles, and I still think it is possible that they could both be World Champions at the same time at some point in the future.

I love the WWE’s documentaries, and this has two of them, and some good matches. The Hardyz have an interesting story in terms of being long-time fans, and it makes for a really nice “dreams come true” story, but without being schmaltzy.

If you’re in the UK and Europe and want to pick up a copy of this DVD, you can do so via the guys at Silver Vision.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading, and can be reached for feedback at mark@wwepreview.com