On the latest “Talk is Jericho” podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Jeff Jarrett opened up about his back-and-forth relationship with Impact Wrestling to reveal that he is proud of the success the company has achieved following his departure.
In 2002, Jarrett and his father together founded NWA: Total Nonstop Action (now known as Impact Wrestling). After departing the promotion in 2014, Jarrett founded another new company, Global Force Wrestling, and he cut ties with Impact after a failed merger of GFW and TNA.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On being proud of Impact’s success: “It’s like a kid that you raised. Not on the best speaking terms [since] 2017; I’ll take the blame all the blame or as much blame as needed [for that]. I do have a lot of a sense of pride, from a professional point of view. Look, TBS and TNT are top five networks. We got on Spike. In the Viacom family, [it was] behind MTV and VH1, they were kind of a ‘red-headed stepchild’ if you will. I think we were a top 25 cable network? I’m not b**ching; we got really successful. It took us a lot longer than three years, but we were making six [to] eight million dollars a year [in] ’07, ’08, ’09. So [we] really built that thing and got it kind of rock ‘n’ rollin’”.
On his his relationship with the company: “It was something that, to this day, [I’m] very proud of. We got that thing rockin’ and rollin’, and then it became ‘Oh, that looks easy,’ and me and Dixie got sideways. Look, I’ll take my responsibility, I didn’t deal with everything perfectly. There’s a lot of blame to go around, but those times were very good. And then in 2013, when me and Toby [Keith] couldn’t buy controlling interest, I just knew the writing on the wall [was] that it wasn’t sustainable in the current model, and that’s when I resigned, and I left, and I gave Global Force [a try]. […] They just had their 20th anniversary; yeah, it’s cool! That library, from Flair, Hogan, Hardys…I’m so glad Anthem…that group got ahold of it with deep pockets…I’m super impressed that they’re keepin’ on keepin’ on.”
On the show’s viewership in the late 2000s: “We were doing about between 1.8 and two million viewers a week. It was fantastic, but here’s what I try to impress upon [people], whether it’s Conrad [Thompson] on my podcast or others: We blew their network average away. The network average in prime time—and they had different content—the network averaged 800,000 [to] 900,000. So when we’re doubling that every week, the value to the network was enormous. I think, had we kept on that charted course…who knows? I definitely think we would have gotten another hour on another night, maybe two hours. The trajectory was definitely that way.”
You can keep up with all your wrestling news right here on eWrestlingNews.com. Or, you can follow us on our Twitter and Facebook pages.
Trending Stories
You can keep up with all your wrestling news right here on eWrestlingNews.com. Or, you can follow us over on our Twitter and Facebook pages.
