There are different aspects and ways of manipulation a crowd. I watched Chris Jericho make crowds want to kill him seconds after they cheered him on, I watched the likes of CM Punk and Edge talk entire stadiums into doing exactly what they wanted, I saw John Cena divide crowds into groups who battled each other with chants of “Let’s go Cena!” and “Cena sucks!”, I follow the recent oddity that has crowds chanting for Randy Orton no matter what he does as long as he gives them an RKO at the end of the show and I watch the way people cheer for the Undertaker every new week on Smackdown… but no none of these men matches Jeff Hardy.
Wrestling has showed that one person can manipulate thousands of people, that if one is able to say the right words, behave the right way, people will react exactly the way he wants them to. I wasn’t there when The Rock and Steve Austin were big in the business so I can say nothing about them but I still saw enough of guys like Jericho and Punk to know what one individual can be able to do to entire stadiums. What they do is fascinating on one and downright scary on the other side. Yes, it is scary, because their way of toying with the masses shows how much power one man can gain over thousands if he has the ability to “pull the right strings” so to say.
Above all of them however there is one man who is better than all of the others: Jeff Hardy. The thing most special about him actually isn’t his ability to manipulate crowds, but the ease he does it with. I watched Extreme Rules 2009 and Backlash 2009 today and could only stare in awe at the way Hardy gets the crowd to go nuts by simply lifting his arm, waving his hand in the air, bowing to the crowd… He does these things like they are natural and I think to some extent they actually are.
Jeff Hardy was always extreme, a – not so – little daredevil. He did and occasionally still does stunts no other wrestler would dare to do. No move is too extreme for him and no ladder too high. Was it that that made him so special? …I’m save to say it at least played a big part in his extraordinary fame. The other is the fact that Hardy, like few other wrestlers, appeals to people because they can relate to who he is – a man who lost his mother as a little boy, was raised by his single father and made his long term dream of becoming a wrestler true when he made it into the WWE. We see ourselves in him, in the way he lives his dream, struggles with drug-problems and still never gives up.
If wrestling fans would be any indication true to which motto people wanted to live, it would most likely be “Live for the moment.”. That is probably the one thing everyone wanted to do at least once in his life, to just live and not care about what will be tomorrow or the next week or even the next year. Living in the moment gives people the freedom of not having to care about others, their health, their future… it is wrong, because it means not taking responsibility for anything, but we still dream we could do it.
That is why stadiums go crazy when they see Jeff Hardy perform: He does what no one dares to do, crosses boundaries that aren’t meant to be crossed … and he invites everyone around him to watch him do it, to take part in the way he breaks the rules. Hardy gives people a glimpse into something they themselves will never experience and they love him for it. He seduces viewers in his own special way and proves time and time again that there is a indeed reason people go nuts about the Extreme Enigma.
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