Promoters like to call professional wrestling a soap opera for men. For once, they're not lying.

Matt Hardy -- "They say in this business you can count your friends on one hand."

Wrestler Matt Hardy lost his fiancee, his six-figure job and one of his best friends in a real-life love triangle inside World Wrestling Entertainment.

Given the enormous Internet and cable television exposure that WWE receives, Hardy's tormented private life became public knowledge in schools and homes across the globe.

"I don't know if embarrassing is the right word for it," Hardy said recently. "It was one of those horrible things where a real-life relationship was ruined because my girlfriend had an affair with one of my closest friends."

Thickening the plot was the fact that all three were marquee names in the WWE, and that the wrestler who stole Hardy's girlfriend is a married man.

Even so it was Hardy, 30, who did not survive the scandal. WWE executives decided in April not to renew his contract, sacking him after seven years.

"I guess I was the most expendable," Hardy said. "But I thought it was very, very unfair."

He works the independent circuit now. Hardy will headline a show Friday at the Monroeville Sports Center for a regional promotion, the International Wrestling Cartel.

Still swaggering under the WWE's bright lights are Hardy's former girlfriend, Amy "Lita" Dumas, 30, and his onetime friend, Adam "Edge" Copeland, 31.

Lita and Edge became romantically involved while traveling the WWE circuit together. At the time, Hardy was convalescing from reconstructive surgery of his left knee. He discovered their affair after finding incriminating text messages on a cell phone.

Wrestlers prattle all the time about exacting revenge on somebody who did them wrong in the ring. But it's obvious Hardy is hurting.

"They say in this business you can count your friends on one hand. I counted him," he said. "To tell you the truth, if I heard he was killed in a car accident, it wouldn't bother me."

Dumas had lived with Hardy in Cameron, N.C., until he learned of her tryst with Copeland. She and Hardy no longer speak, though their working relationship was repaired for a few awkward minutes this month.

Hardy twice returned to WWE for one-night engagements, attacking Copeland on live television each time. "Police" handcuffed Hardy for viewers' entertainment. WWE got some mileage out of the messy affair, and Hardy got a couple more paydays from wrestling's biggest company.

With its raw emotion, the Hardy-Lita-Edge case looked like a perfect ongoing story line for the lurid ways of WWE. The company, though, said that will not be the case.

WWE spokesman Gary Davis said Hardy is not under contract with the company, playing down speculation that the affair would continue to be exploited on WWE television shows.

Davis will not say whether the real-life friction between Hardy and Copeland had anything to do with Hardy's firing.

"At the time we released Matt, we didn't give a reason. We're not going to say anything now, other than we wish him well," Davis said.

Axed from big-time wrestling, Hardy has commitments to wrestle for a variety of independent promoters through November.

One of them is Norm Connors. A mortician in Sinking Spring in Berks County by day, he runs the International Wrestling Cartel at night. With Hardy on his card this week, Connors said he expects a crowd of 400 to 500 at Monroeville Sports Center. It's a long way from WrestleMania.

In intimate settings such as Connors' shows, wrestlers mingle with fans, hawking their autographs and snapshots. Connors does not book female valets, who have become integral to WWE shows. He focuses instead on fast-paced matches, which he says are similar in style to those staged in Japan.

What is missing in glitz, Connors hopes, is made up in ring action. He recently brought wrestling legend Bruno Sammartino to see one of his shows, something Connors hopes will lend credibility to his company.

As his champion, Connors employs local wrestler Sam Panico, whose ring name is Shirley Doe. Doe will defend his title Friday, but he will not have the top spot on the card.

The main event will belong instead to Hardy and his opponent, an up-and-coming Georgia wrestler named A.J. Styles.

Styles, 28, a devout Christian, said he admires Hardy as a performer and sympathizes with him on a personal level after the troubled year he has had.

"I've known Matt for a couple of years, and I'm proud of him," Styles said. "He has always been a nice guy."

For a time, Styles said, he thought that rumormongers focusing on Hardy's private life were simply trying to spike WWE ticket sales and cable ratings. Once the hype hit a crescendo, he thought Hardy might return to WWE for good, where he would learn to co-exist with Lita and Edge.

"But if the whole thing was a work" -- wrestling parlance for a fictional story designed to whip up fan interest -- "Matt wouldn't be taking all these independent bookings," Styles said.

Hardy said it was all too real, and it still hurts.

"I'm big on being a person of principle," he said. "I never thought anything like this would happen."