On a recent episode of his “My World” podcast, AEW Director of Business Development Jeff Jarrett discussed his stint with WWE in 1998.
Jarrett opined on his relationship with Vince McMahon, his exclusion from the WrestleMania XIV card, and feeling marginalized along with Owen Hart due to Steve Austin’s refusal to work with the duo.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On his relationship with Vince McMahon in 1998: “I mean let’s give it over a month’s time maybe have a conversation with Vince. One out of four maybe two out of four ‘hey Vince, what do you think?’, but he obviously had much bigger fish to fry. I could tell by his lack of engagement Very cordial, but it wasn’t ‘yeah, let’s sit down and talk about this.’ Hindsight is 20/20.”
On being left off WrestleMania XIV: “At that time did I say I’m just glad to be on the show? I probably said that with a mask on to McMahon, or Bruce, or Cornette, or Russo. I’m not really in a story. The NWA thing stutter start that didn’t work. Okay, great, but I mean there was nothing there. You come to Mania to wrestle on the show and there was nothing there. On the flip side you can pull that card out and kind of look — I mean it was really the coming out party of Stone Cold and I don’t want to say that, that’s probably not right. It was his time. This was the definitive Stone Cold era is here. I think that’s the best way and everything about it Tyson, just the role that everything was on from that mindset. It was what it was. Okay, Jeff’s on the show it’s like a filler spot maybe better than getting beat the first match. Because, there is a delusional optimistic Jeff would have said ‘Well, I’m not doing a job on the show.’”
On if Jarrett and Owen Hart felt marginalized due to Stone Cold not wanting to work with them: “We would discuss it, but not in anger and resentment. It’s like, well, this is kind of the role it’s at and both being second generation or been in the business our families and all that you kind of.. we understood the dynamics and during this time and this is where to really take a step back, but we had not just the inklings we kind of understood it there was really the Austin program, the Taker program and everything else was just kind of revolving. There was no real long-term story, not much. I’m sure there’s people that will say ‘oh no, look at this story this went on two pay-per-views.’ But, as far as really the hard sell of each event it was in a lot of ways Stone Cold and others because Rock hadn’t completely exploded out and Shawn was gone, Brett was gone, and Taker had his story, So, again, if you had to tell me — I worked with Blackman a lot during this time. I couldn’t even tell you who Owen worked with night in, night out on the shows.”
