Jeff Jarrett was a recent guest of The Wrestling Perspective podcast and he discussed the wrestling talent he’s helped develop over the years. Jarrett highlighted his time with TNA/Impact as being especially influential.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
Helping young talent develop: “I feel lucky, grateful, blessed all the above. It’s kind of the culture, also, that I was born and raised in the Tennessee territory. [With] the socioeconomic, we couldn’t compete with Charlotte or the WWE/F just [because] of their dollars and cents. Texas was a lot bigger. So, my father and Jerry Lawler, and obviously their predecessors, were always looking for new talent and developing new talent. That whole learning tree was that you have to have a turnover talent. It was Lawler, [Bill] Dundee, and maybe Dutch [Mantel]. Talent came through: Road Warriors, Hogan, Savage, you name it, they all came through Tennessee. But the mindset of cultivating talent was in my DNA, and it still is today in ways. That would probably surprise you, but it’s part of who I am as a businessman, cultivating talent.”
Talent development while in TNA: “Then if you fast forward to 2002, June 19th, we launched TNA, and we were the alternative at that time. As Lars pointed out, there weren’t cellphones, Youtube, it was pre-social media, pre-… all that kind of instantaneous information. So, the internet was just getting its legs under it in a big way. So we were the alternative, and so the culture that we created with that early, early TNA Crew was small. And then we grew, and then, as you know, with Team Canada, Samoa Joe, AJ Styles, and Beer Money… Just the development of talent through the years was part of. It always will be part of my DNA, and I just think as we progress, I think the opportunities in 2023 to develop talent is more than ever.”
