The careers of Christian Cage and Jeff Hardy have been closely linked for more than 20 years. The ladder match that featured Edge and Christian taking on The Hardy Boyz at WWE‘s No Mercy PPV in 1999 essentially put both teams on the map and led to a spectacular three year stretch of tag team wrestling in the company.

Christian was interviewed this week by ET Canada and the topic of Hardy came up. Following his release from WWE earlier this month, Christian said that he believes that Hardy will join his brother Matt in AEW eventually.

“Yeah, of course (expects him to join AEW). There’s so much history there and, obviously, I’m very close with Matt [Hardy] as well,” he said. “It’s been great to reconnect with him in AEW. He’s kind of doing the same thing as far as mentoring the younger generation the same way. He’s also got a wealth of knowledge. Jeff is an extremely talented guy. A really good guy. I’m sure at some point that will happen.”

Jeff Hardy was sent home from a WWE live tour in Texas on December 5th. This followed an incident at a show on December 4th where Hardy walked out through the crowd during the middle of a tag team match. On December 9th, he was officially released from the company. Rumors have swirled that substance abuse had something to do with it, and it was reported that WWE offered to pay for Hardy to attend rehab but he refused the offer.

“Before anyone rushes to judgment, obviously they [WWE] drug tested him after all this stuff, wait until you hear the results of that and when that comes back clean then hopefully people will feel better about it,” Matt Hardy said during a recent Twitch broadcast. “They [WWE] felt like they were backed into a corner because of his [Jeff’s] history. Even though they may have jumped the gun with this a little bit, they made a decision and it is what it is.”

He continued, “Jeff is in the best place I’ve seen him in a very long time. As far as the details of what went down on that evening, and in that match, I’ve talked with Jeff, I feel good about everything he said and that’s Jeff’s story to share. And he told me he will when he’s ready to.”