WWE Hall Of Famer Jeff Jarrett and Global Force Wrestling have filed a lawsuit against IMPACT Wrestling’s parent company, Anthem Sports.
The lawsuit cites copyright and trademark infringement. The news was first reported by PWInsider. The lawsuit claims Anthem and their other Anthem Wrestling Exhibitions company continued to use profit footage from the Global Force Wrestling Amped tapings. The tapings happened several years ago and were apparently used without Jarrett’s permission.
Both parties discussed merging back in December of 2016. In May of 2017 they signed a term sheet, and the document noted that GFW retained all rights to the Amped footage. The plans for the two companies to merge were never finalized and were eventually dropped after Jarrett was fired from IMPACT in October.
Despite the two companies never merging, Jarrett is claiming that IMPACT is continuing to profit off the GFW Amped footage. It was also said IMPACT does not obtain the licensing to distribute the footage. The footage could be streamed on the Global Wrestling Network and was also available on Impact’s online store for DVD. Also it was mentioned that there are some similarities between the Global Wrestling Network and Global Force Wrestling, such as the green letters and name.
In a response to the lawsuit, IMPACT has pulled the four Global Force Wrestling DVDs that were available for sale. The GFW Amped footage was originally filmed for a potential 16 episode TV series, but was instead repurposed into the Impact One Night Only pay-per-view (PPV) that aired in 2017.
