Thursday, March 28, 2024
NewsWho is the Willow?

Who is the Willow?

1,259 views

Hello there fellow wrestling fans. Kylos here, main administrator for the Facebook page, and writer for TNA PPV recaps. You may remember me from such blogs as: The Benoit Family Tragedy – A Serious & Unbiased Explanation, and the episodic blog series known as “You know what really grinds my gears”.

I would like to continue writing about the subject of wrestling, because I know the passion, I can feel the passion from you keyboard warriors every single day. I see all of the love, all of the hate, all of the smarkiness, (Is that even a word? Oh well I’m using it.) and all of the ignorant attitudes oozing out from a small handful of you. Regardless of any negativity, I try to be optimistic in my views, while also keeping my views realistic.

This is where my subject matter begins, I want to talk about this new character about to hit TNA Impact Wrestling (Yes, there is another wrestling company in the US besides WWE, get over it.) simply known as “The Willow”.

Who is The Willow?? Well anybody with two brain cells working in tandem, could tell you it is Jeff Hardy. His eyes and voice are a dead giveaway, but that is not the question I was asking. I am asking, who is the Willow?

I have already seen the reactions, and they usually come down to three seperate (and rather expected) reactions.

1) So TNA are copying the Wyatts from WWE now?

2) I suppose if Jeff was coked up now, we wouldn’t notice.

3) I like it, I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with it.

First off, as many people fail to realize, the character known as The Willow/Willow the Wisp was created by Jeff Hardy in his early days working in OMEGA. Jeff, Matt, Gregory Helms and others made up many different characters in those days and played them out in Matt Hardy’s promotion. Jeff Hardy has talked about The Willow before, and always expressed interest in introducing it on a major stage.

Here is where I explain why Willow is nothing like the Wyatt family, and why it is typical that people see something, and automatically try to compare it to something that WWE is doing to bash on TNA.

The Willow is a dark character like the Wyatts, that is one similarity (you could say the same thing about Undertaker/Kane though) and how The Willow appears to talk in riddles. The thing is, the way The Willow talks, is the exact same way he has always talked, so by no means has TNA seen the Wyatt family and said to Jeff, you should talk like they do, because The Willow character has been talking like that since the 1990s.

Not only that, but The Willow is a pretty eccentric, and somewhat bizarre character as he doesn’t have any real goals. He doesn’t have a plan, he doesn’t follow anybody, and nobody follows him.

Will-o’-the-wisp, for those who are unaware,are atmospheric ghost lights seen by travellers at night, especially over bogs, swamps or marshes. It resembles a flickering lamp and is said to recede if approached, drawing travellers from the safe paths. The phenomenon is known by a variety of names, including jack-o’-lantern, friars’s lantern, hinkypunk, and hobby lantern in English folk belief, well attested in English folklore and in much of European folklore.

The meaning of Will-o’-the-wisp changes from country to country. In Britian it has been described in many stories that the mysterious ghost lights were held by a mysterious figure.

“A peasant travelling home at dusk sees a bright light traveling along ahead of him. Looking closer, he sees that the light is a lantern held by a “dusky little figure”, which he follows for several miles. All of a sudden he finds himself standing on the edge of a vast chasm with a roaring torrent of water rushing below him. At that precise moment the lantern-carrier leaps across the gap, lifts the light high over its head, lets out a malicious laugh and blows out the light, leaving the poor peasant a long way from home, standing in pitch darkness at the edge of a precipice.” -Wiki

The Willow is not a creepy red neck with two followers, The Willow is a mysterious being that will show up and do whatever he wants, for the fun of it. Whether the Willow will be face, heel, or something inbetween, is still unknown, and to be honest, I prefer for TNA to keep it blurred and let the fans decide.

I see a number of people mentioning cocaine in this. TNA and Jeff Hardys fellow wrestlers have stated that Hardy is clean, and has turned himself around impressively since that dreadful Victory Road incident. Hardy has a daughter now, and I feel that Hardy has felt what it means to be a father, and a role model to children.

Fame went to his head for a while, he had nothing to live for, except for the moment, whereas now he has a daughter’s future to look forward too. As a father myself, I couldn’t imagine being a coked up drug addict, while also looking after my child. I would expect the mother to stop that happening at all costs, and if TNA knew anything about it, you would expect to see Hardy unemployed, or possibly working the Indy scene.

Also, pulling off a character such as this, you need to be sober. The sheer effort that Hardy has put into the Willow character is immediately noticeable, you can’t do that character baked out of your skull, not even slightly.

Of course, I know people just like to laugh and poke fun, they don’t literally mean that he is on it, but the character is so out there, it wouldn’t be a surprise if he was.

As usual, people see something like this, and automatically label it as bad. How can you judge something you havn’t even seen yet??? Off one video??

Are people really that judgmental? Sadly they are, so I hope Hardy can turn this character into something people want to tune in and see.

Why do I like this new idea? Because for a very long time now (even when he was back in the WWE) I have said that Jeff Hardy needs to do something new. Jeff Hardy cannot cut a decent promo to save his life when he is live. Recorded videos? Sure that is fine, he can work on that and make it half-decent, but give him a live microphone, and well .. aside from the face paint, cool armbands, and the girls screaming, he has absolutely zero personality and finds it difficult to sound like a real human being. He pauses a lot, he gets cheap pops from the crowds, and usually gets owned by the likes of Austin Aries or Bully Ray who make him look very ordinary.

Not only that, but his ring style has gotten stale too. How many times have you seen that typical Jeff Hardy match? You know the ones I am talking about, it is the dreadful way that a wrestler gets into a routine of doing the same moves, over and over and over, usually always in the same sequence. You know what’s coming, and you don’t care for it anymore.

Seeing Jeff Hardy as the Willow blew me away. I thought, Wow, I never knew Jeff Hardy could actually sound intimidating, creepy, cryptic, and downright insane all at the same time. That maniacal laugh? Wow, I never knew Jeff had that in him. After all of these years, I assumed Jeff Hardy was just a spot monkey, with his only real allure being his facepaint, armbands, and his flock of female fans who would overexcite themselves on the very sight of him.

Now Jeff Hardy has a character, just think of the possibilities for storylines? When was the last time you was seriously invested in a feud with Jeff Hardy? I honestly cannot remember. The last great thing I can remember from Jeff was the Ladder match with Austin Aries, and that wasn’t really a feud, it was just an awesome fight over the World title.

I would like to end this by giving you two videos. The first one is an interesting video, an older video, showing the back story behind Willow-o’-the-wisp, and how it came to an end. There are some interesting comments from Matt Hardy and Shannon Moore in this video too. It may change your perception a little on what The Willow means to Jeff Hardy personally.

And the final video.. is the TNA video you may have already seen.

I will include what he says here, but I am confused on one of the words he uses, as the pitch of his voice is so erratic it is hard to tell what he said.

“When the past reminds you of how good you were,

the future awaits your fate, while the present

eats away at your shallow course of collosal(?),

he doesn’t think like you, nor does he feel like you,

his alien ways are the reason, for my very existence,

we were all born dieing, as the aging angel,

it celebrates sorrow, in honor of his death.

We love! We hate! We die! Eliminate .. in Willow’s way.

*maniacal laugh* In Willow’s way… (echoed)”

What are your thoughts? Is this good for Jeff? Is this good for TNA? Are you only here out of boredom and don’t really care? Let us know all those gory details, I am sure someone, somewhere, might just care enough to give you that up/down vote you desperately crave. Until next time.

Thanks for reading.