In a recent appearance on the AEW Unrestricted podcast, Jeff Jarrett reflected on his journey in 2022 from wrestling in GCW to joining WWE to signing with AEW.
Jarrett noted that he had kept an eye on AEW since day one. He also put over his faction with Sonjay Dutt, Jay Lethal, and Satnam Singh. He said,
“You know, that kind of is actually a good question and I have yet to even roll out the entire thing, even on my own podcast because timing is everything.” Jarrett said. “Things just happen for a reason. So I’ll go back into the fall of 2021, when I kind of made up my mind that ‘You know what, I’ve always been in decent shape. I’m gonna go get in the best shape that I can.’ A little thing happened called GCW Wrestling at the Hammerstein Ballroom, that kind of happened. Then, special referee in NWA and then I got that summer internship at the competition and went to working on live events in WWE. I almost committed a murder and killed Ric Flair, I almost murdered him. Look, charges weren’t pressed but anyway. SummerSlam happened and then all of the sudden you kind of wake up and I’m on the free agent market. Literally, 2022 was one of the craziest years I’ve ever had… I started in 1986. It was just kind of a bizarre year all the way around. Sitting back and kind of… look, I’ve watched AEW from episode one, I don’t care. I’m a wrestling junkie. I don’t care if it’s YouTube or a streaming service, whatever it may be. I’ve watched more live wrestling than I believe anybody my age just because I’ve had the opportunity to be at so many shows and watch some live. I just love it. I love it more today than I ever have, but as things rolled along in 2022, I’m watching the AEW program and [seeing] the guy I was just in a tag match with at Ric Flair’s Last Match, Jay Lethal. Sonjay Dutt, we go back twenty something years. Satnam Singh from India, I’m a basketball junkie but also know the Indian market pretty well. I just kind of saw those individuals and I kid you not, when I just kind of looked and went ‘In a lot of ways, this is a natural fit.’ When I tell you that the pieces of the puzzle, I don’t wanna get into divine intervention or anything like that, but you just can’t write it. You cannot write the opportunity that was right in front of everyone. Hats off to the powers that be so to speak, they kind of saw that opportunity. When I showed up on Dynamite and gave Darby [Allin] a little attitude adjustment, things were off to the races. Literally from the first week of November, I feel like I’ve just got here in some ways and in other ways, I feel like I’ve been in the AEW machine for a lot more than five months.”
