Expected Timeline for Jeff Hardy’s Return

Jeff Hardy underwent successful surgery on Tuesday to repair the torn rotator cuff and labrum in his shoulder. Now that Hardy is officially on the road to recovery, how long will it be?

According to PWInsider, Hardy will be about for the next 6-9 months. This time frame places his availability for WrestleMania 34 in an interesting spot. The injury has taken other wrestlers about 7 months to return to the ring, a target date for Hardy that lands almost directly on the New Orleans mega show. In short, Jeff Hardy at WrestleMania is a distinct possibility.

Hardy published the following post-operative picture to his Instagram.

“It’s depressing,” Hardy told WWE.com. “More than any time in a career, it’s those times that make you go, ‘Wow, I love professional wrestling.’ It sucks that I can’t be involved in [a] match or can’t get in there and do what I normally do because I’m injured, but I just have to get over that, stop worrying about it and look forward and push myself to get repaired and healed and come back better than ever with a brand-new shoulder.”

Despite the loss, fans have begun to speculate on the silver lining of Jeff’s potentially long absence. Matt Hardy may finally have the necessary breathing room to become “BROKEN” as a solo wrestler.

However, having Jeff around was not the key factor as to why Matt had to stay within the parameters of his normal WWE character. Matt is currently embroiled in a legal battle with his former employer, Impact/GFW over the rights to the Broken gimmick. Until GFW relents their legal stronghold, Matt Hardy will have to stay unbroken.There is the off chance that WWE and Hardy acquired the privilege to use the characters thanks to GFW’s rapid economic decline, but that seems unlikely.

Broken or not, it looks like Matt Hardy will be on his own for the rest of 2017.