On a recent edition of his My World with Jeff Jarrett podcast, the founder of TNA (Impact Wrestling) and current AEW competitor discussed his former company.
Jarrett commented on Chris Harris, one-half of America’s Most Wanted with James Storm, leaving TNA in 2008, as well as members of the roster impersonating better-known WWE stars.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On Chris Harris exiting TNA: “He went to WWE not long after this, correct? Chris’s outlook on life, and I’ve walked the same shoes as him in a lot of instances. I think he had his eyes set… man, you could probably go down — I don’t want to say only in professional wrestling, but Chris and James are not the only team to have this kind of dynamic relationship when in real life they didn’t hang out. They kind of did, but they had different groups they were hanging with. So, their chemistry on camera was completely different than their real life relationship. I think this would be fair to say at this stage of both of those guys. They had different psychology, different mindset.
“But, when you put them together they just had the chemistry and they were there in a lot of ways from literally day one. And you know, when you kind of look at their dynamic, Chris had really, really good handsome — I don’t want to call it GQ looks, but he had a certain aura about him. And James is the cowboy, so you put them together they were a little bit of a yin and yang and it just worked. These two guys had real good chemistry, but they wanted apart from each other. I mean, I’d bet in ’05 they were pitching Vince Russo storylines to split up. I was never for it. I just never saw the upside. I think eventually we caved and said, ‘Okay, let’s do that.’ I can’t say I’d predicted, because they’re both really good talent and they’re both good singles wrestlers and they both got skillsets that I thought they both could get over as singles. But look, at the end of the day it always happens. When you have a tag team split one goes up one goes down. I’ve never seen a case, you know a real case where, “Well yeah, they both [excelled]. There’s just not enough spots. It just doesn’t happen.”
On having wrestlers impersonate better-known WWE wrestlers: “So, I definitely see his [Lance Storm’s] points, but I always viewed Shark Boy because however it happened of him doing an impersonation, Sharkey was obviously a complete comedy character and him doing his version of Stone Cold — it wasn’t Stone Cold Steve Austin, I think we had another name, but it was Stone Cold Shark Boy or something along those lines. Steve was out of the business at the time or not certainly not active. Shark Boy we always looked he’s straight comedy character.
“Jay Lethal, and I can see where Lance would kind of lump him together, but I always looked at — you know, Ric Flair was not the original Nature Boy. There was one before that, and so I was and I still am today that when Jay, I’ll call it plays an extension of his personality — because yeah, you can say he’s playing a character of the black machismo. But if he gets into the mindset, that’s Jay. Jay is a professional wrestler first and foremost and a damn good one with that but a part of his personality is kind of coming into this larger than life that plays a little bit of literally a little bit of Macho Man Randy Savage a little bit of Ric Flair. I’ll say a little bit of we’ll just call it the old school flamboyant type, but I wanted Jay to stay the course and make that your won. Create who black machismo character is and make it Jay Lethal’s. I see where Lance is going he lumped both of them in the same. Probably got a valid point when you see two on one show, but in our view point entirely one was a parody one was a character development.”
