As reported on Tuesday, Global Force Wrestling announced that Jeff Jarrett would be taking an indefinite leave of absence due to personal issues. The story given is true but there is more going on behind the scenes with the company.
Jarrett’s tweet just hours before the announcement indicates that this was something that was forced on him and he was not planning on taking any time off from the company. While Jarrett may not have known what was coming, Dave Meltzer reports that others in the company were aware of the decision for at least a week.
Tuesday morning…let's go…super excited about September for @IMPACTWRESTLING @GFWWrestling …
— Jeff Jarrett (@RealJeffJarrett) September 5, 2017
The last straw was said to be Jarrett’s condition at the AAA Triplemania pay-per-view. Many people noted that he seemed to be in bad shape and was stumbling down the stairs as he made his way to the ring. Meltzer reported that Ed Nordholm was on the trip and he was the one to make the call to remove Jarrett from his position.
However, there was issues before that. There was the shouting match with Bob Ryder backtage at one of the Impact tapings. Things were smoothed over but things were said to have gotten ugly. The other thing that hurt Jarrett’s standing in the eyes of Anthem was the tweets from Reby Hardy, specifically the tweet about her receiving drunk messages from Jarrett and the tweets referencing a February court appearance for an Ignition interlock violation.
Violation of ignition. Hot & fresh out the kitchen. pic.twitter.com/AT5YRHsjhW
— Reby Hardy (@RebyHardy) June 22, 2017
As noted earlier, Anthem reportedly wants to get out and sell the company. People in the company will publicly deny it and they’ve reached out to talent to ease their fears but the fact is that every time the sale stories come up, people will deny things until the sale is completed.
The big issue is not being able to open up revenue streams. Their shows in the northeast did not draw well and they had to settle with Pop TV for another year. That deal keeps them on TV in the United States in 2018 but it does not pay much because it’s a barter deal. The problem with staying on Pop TV is that it means that they will continue to hover around 300,000 viewers each week and that makes it harder for them to sell tickets to live events and generate merchandise revenue. If WWE ends up being the buyer then they would be getting the TNA library and associated trademarks, which means that they would have ownership of the Broken Hardy IP’s, which is a good thing for Matt and Jeff Hardy.
The interesting thing here is that the GFW/Anthem merger was never completed so Jeff Jarrett still owns Global Force Wrestling and Anthem owns Impact Wrestling/TNA Wrestling. But the store here is if Impact is sold to WWE then that company is dead and GFW (in theory) is still alive. It’s not clear if they would still run on Pop TV and there is still the question about whether Jarrett can get funding to continue GFW with or without TV. But let’s be clear here, there is great concern about the future of Impact Wrestling.
For now, John Gaburick has stepped up as the person leading the creative direction with Scott D’Amore and Sonjay Dutt reporting to him. That’s another interesting note because D’Amore and Dutt are close Jarrett allies and there was heat on Gaburick from when he was in charge when Dixie Carter was still involved. I would assume that with Jeff out that Karen would also be gone. There are also questions regarding the future of Jim Cornette and Dutch Mantell. They are close friends of Jarrett and were brought in at his request.
The Hardys have taken to Twitter with their reaction to the news:
The Hardys will outlast all. pic.twitter.com/I5VnK6CNBZ
— MATT HARDY (@MATTHARDYBRAND) September 6, 2017
— Reby Hardy (@RebyHardy) September 5, 2017
Reby Hardy also wrote: “Yall trippin if you think imma be anything BUT laughing at the misfortune of someone who went SO OUT OF THEIR WAY to fck w my family. FOH. Not gonna get a fake response out of me. You’d be doing the saaaame thing if you were in my shoes. Plenty of fake people on the internet to follow if you don’t like my vibe. Hop on their jock if that’s what you’re looking for. Not mine.”
Their TV shows are already taped and will cover them up until Bound For Glory in early November. Aside from the BFG PPV, there are no live events (TV tapings or otherwise) announced yet for November.
Here are some more trending news stories from the past week:
- Major name returning to WWE TV next week
- GFW reportedly hemorrhaging funds, Anthem is ready to sell the company
- WWE has signed another former ROH star
- Young Bucks issued a “cease and desist” from WWE
- WWE star to undergo surgery
