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OK, so there was this match at Armageddon tonight and both Edge and Triple H were involved … and Jeff Hardy overcame those odds to win it all, taking home the WWE Title for the first time in his career, and becoming the first wrestler to ever wear the TNA belt and THEN go on to win a major WWE title.

No, this is not a practical joke, a dream, a prank, and you’re not on Candid WebCam. Jeff Hardy really did beat Triple H and Edge to win the title at WWE Armageddon tonight. At long last!

Hardy, often believed to be one of the most under-appreciated wrestlers on the WWE roster both before and after his stint and title run over at TNA, overcame staid and stale booking habits and other long odds to finally win the biggest belt of all … or at least the biggest belt on SmackDown.

Of course, the booking was scripted to make Hardy look a bit flukey for his first major singles title win; Triple H did the heavy lifting, delivering a Pedigree on Edge for the apparent predictable win, but then Hardy hit the Swanton to dislodge Hunter, take his place pinning Edge, and earning the three-count and a free set of luggage… or not, on the luggage.

Let’s hope WWE and Smackdown play it smart and keep the title on Hardy a good long time… like, all the way to WrestleMania, at least.

The match result on this one makes a person feel like Triple-H has wholesale ownership of the WWE Title, given that he’s the boss’s son-in-law. No one’s worked harder over on Smackdown to take the show to a new level than Jeff Hardy, and he was no exception in this match.

Unfortunately, though both men put on a solid show, the Rainbow-Haired Warrior was forced to job to The In-Law Assassin anyway, and perhaps even scratch his head in wonder about why he returned from TNA, which had made him a world champion, just to job out to an aging Hunter yet again. Ugh.

WINNER: Triple H
RATING: 7.8

Before this match, there was an entertaining segment involving MVP, Ted DiBiase Jr., Cody Rhodes, Manu, C.M. Punk, and Kofi Kingston that was entertaining, and a couple of too-brief filler matches in which Batista totally dominated JBL and Big Show won via TKO stoppage over Undertaker. But I’d rather skip right to the meaty dual main event matches, to shine a sconce on the real interesting matches tonight.

The first of these was a SmackDown match involving Triple H defending the WWE Title against Jeff Hardy. These two rarely hook up, but it’s always been memorable when they do and tonight’s match was no exception. Lots of fast-n-furious near-falls, reversals and such that really kept a person guessing at the finish, and Jim Ross was in top form on the announcing duties, really doing great at putting Hardy over as a legit threat to Triple H’s title reign.

The final minute or two is what put the match over the top and made this, in my opinion, the best match of the night. Great 17-minute match.

WINNER: Triple H retains the WWE Title

RATING: 9.1 (out of 10)

The airport incident involving WWE superstar Jeff Hardy has kind of been sorted out and clarified. According to online reports and news sources, Hardy was indeed detained at a Nashville airport, being denied boarding onto a flight because airport staff believed he “appeared intoxicated.”

Hardy has faced two strikes in the WWE Wellness Policy, and a third strike would lead directly to a major penalty, including suspension. However, contrary to some reports, there was no altercation over the incident and Hardy remained cooperative during the entire time.

Although the airline offered an alternative flight later on, Hardy made other arrangements to get to where he was going. Perhaps if he’d stayed at Laughlin hotels, he would have appeared more rested and none of this would have occurred.

Well, at least there was not enough to the incident to trigger a third strike in Jeff’s Wellness Policy; he’s a high-energy, very promotable talent with the ability to wear a major belt sometime soon. Let’s hope he stays smart and out of trouble, so that nothing messes up his momentum.

Now that he’s reached his 30th birthday, Jeff Hardy is planning to tone down his traditionally over-the-top in-ring style, which has in the past invovled acrobatic backflips and jumps from heights at which few other wrestlers would attempt. Perhaps he’s looked at how toning his style down will affect his life insurance rates.

Whatever the case, Hardy the high-flyer will slowly be giving way to Hardy the in-ring storyteller, according to Jeff’s recent interview with the Winnipeg Sun.

“I know what I can and can’t do,” Hardy said. “I go back to when I was watching wrestling as a kid. Macho Man, Hulk Hogan, and The Ultimate Warrior could have great matches by telling a story in the ring. They didn’t have to do backflips.”

Jeff Hardy is one of many top WWE talents who could be switching brands tonight on USA Network’s three-hour RAW broadcast, featuring the WWE Draft, which has become an annual event in which the company shakes up its respective rosters to freshen up storylines and feuds.

I hate to say it, but I’m already bored with the whole King Regal bit. While it made for a nice shocking moment the first time Regal ended Raw early, mid-match, the whole ongoing bit of turning out the ring lights and stopping good promos and good matches (while the bad ones seem to still go on uninterrupted) has quickly worn thin.

Regal’s power trip is about as intriguing as a natural acne treatment video to a senior citizen, and it’s ruining important moments in the Raw broadcast. The most blatent example of this from last night’s Raw was when Regal shut down the first promo Jeff Hardy has cut since returning from a two-month suspension related to the WWE’s Wellness Policy.

That was an important moment in re-establishing Hardy’s character, so having it cut off was more than just an angle; it cheated the crowd. Wherever this is headed with Regal, it needs to be over soon, since this is not creating the good type of “nasty villain” heat, but is actually resulting in viewer apathy, since it seems like any time a promo or match gets interesting, they pull the “Regal cuts the power” angle.

Drop it, fast, Vince!

You know, looking back over the main matches at WrestleMania again, I’d have to say that my favorite match was still the WWE title match between Randy Orton, Triple H and John Cena. While the Flair-HBK match had way more emotion, the truth of the matter is that the WWE Title match just had more youth and energy.

You don’t have to be a futures broker to see that John Cena and Randy Orton will be WWE mainstays for some time to come. The question here is where the next big stars are, who are lining up behind them.

I still like the long-term potential of Ken Kennedy and MVP, and Jeff Hardy isn’t exactly new, but his solo work in WWE since returning from TNA is like a fresh start for him. My main complaint, though, is that in both WrestleMania and now the upcoming Backlash, WWE continues to insist on overpromoting the inferior SmackDown brand.

Let’s face it; Raw is where the action is. Let’s start structuring the PPVs to reflect that, shall we?

While a 4.0 in the Nielsens is no big whoop for most network shows, it packs the equivalent whallop of an ECA stack for Monday Night Raw, which has been riding the low 3.0 range for the past few months during the writer’s strike.

Now that the strike is over, people seem to be coming back to TV again, and that includes wrestling. While WWE Raw is by no means riding high with a 4.0, considering they were drawing almost three times that number at their peak about a decade ago, it’s still an impressive number.

Of course, this is pre-WrestleMania season and interest in the Fed always seems to take a leap up at this time of year, no matter what else is going on. Let’s hope the new viewers like what they are seeing and tell a few friends just how good Cena, Orton and Hardy can be, when they set their minds to it.

Despite a lot of story elements necessary to build hype for the last PPV event before Wrestlemania, namely No Way Out, if anyone had a checking account, this was not a week to bank on Raw ratings as the show offered up few matches that lasted longer than three minutes.

A lot of squashes and in-ring segments filled much of the broadcast, and while the Hornswaggle-McMahon ass-kissing/biting segment was entertaining in a juvenile way typical of the Fed, much of the night was wasted time that did nothing to promote the in-ring abilities of most of the performers.

A notable exception was the six-man tag match that served as the show’s denouement, involving Jeff Hardy, Chris Jericho and Shawn Michaels against Snitsky, JBL and Umaga. That match went 16 minutes, highlighted everyone, and was genuinely entertaining.

The rest of the show? Well, let’s just say it left a lot of its game on the bench this week.

Despite an effective storyline that had WWE fans believing in the possibility of a title change so close to WrestleMania, Jeff Hardy failed in his bid to unseat Randy Orton as the WWE champion at the 2008 Royal Rumble on Sunday. They threw everything but Kohler sinks into the title match, but while Hardy and Orton took turns dominating the match, Hardy seemed on the verge of victory, about to deliver a Twist of Fate for the win.

That’s when Orton hit the reversal and an RKO helped him retain the title off a clean victory. The real question now is where the WWE will take the storyline from here. Will they continue to develop the Hardy-Orton storyline that worked so well, or will they switch storylines as the company focuses in on WrestleMania hype?

Given the winner of the Royal Rumble… well, let’s just say it’s looking like back-burner time for Jeff Hardy, through no fault of his own, and unless his character takes a hard heel turn soon, he’ll soon be out of the WWE title picture once again.

This week’s WWE Raw broadcast drew a 3.6 rating, down from 4.1 for the same week last year. However, that’s about what the broadcast has been averaging in recent weeks, so at least it’s staying level.

While many in the industry expected WWE’s ratings to skyrocket as a result of the writer’s strike, due to WWE featuring new episodes every week while other shows go into reruns or are replaced by reality shows, just the opposite seems to be true.

Instead of Raw, SmackDown and ECW benefiting from the wasteland of reruns, it seems are viewers turn out other programs, fewer are also tuning out in general from WWE broadcasts as well. The Republican Party is fond of the saying, “A rising tide lifts all boats,” meaning that good economic times benefit everyone. In this case, it would seem the opposite is true as well; a sinking tide lowers all boats.

It’s the loss of those who don’t tune in, though; if ratings were based on well-executed storylines, the feud between WWE champ Randy Orton and challenger Jeff Hardy would be drawing in record ratings the way buyers swarm real estate offices when they hear that there is South Carolina land for sale.

Jeff Hardy is a great Cinderella story going into the upcoming Royal Rumble PPV.

Along with his brother Matt, the rainbow-haired warrior helped define high-risk tag-team wrestling throughout the 1990s. When the time came to split the pair up and allow the brothers to move on with their singles careers, the process caused so many migraines, Jeff left WWE for TNA, where Jeff Jarrett eventually put the championship strap on him.

So far, Jeff is the only WWE-to-TNA refugee that Vincent Kennedy McMahon has brought back into the WWE. That in itself is a minor miracle; even Kurt Angle hasn’t been offered that deal.

But now, the big question that is plaguing the McMahon family is whether they can swallow their pride enough to put the WWE title on a wrestler who once abandoned them for a minor-league TNA promotion and wore their strap. Certainly, there has been a huge push behind Randy Orton as a heel champ, and the preferred plan would be to keep the strap on him until John Cena returns.

But is that what’s best for Raw ratings and the WWE? That’s what we’re all waiting to find out.