The big news on Tuesday night was about Jeff Jarrett and the decision for him to take an indefinite leave of absence from Global Force Wrestling. However, there is more to the story than a simple leave of absence for “personal reasons.” But there is a bigger story that could signal the end of Anthem’s involvement in the wrestling business.
Sports Illustrated’s Justin Barrasso has more details on the situation and it doesn’t sound good for Anthem/GFW. The company is “hemorrhaging funds” and sources have confirmed that Anthem is ready to sell GFW. The fact that the Fight Network was gutted in order to finance GFW explains some of the budget cuts and why money has been tight.
Another interesting bit of news in this story is that the deal to merge Impact Wrestling and Global Force Wrestling was never completed so Jarrett still owns GFW, while Anthem owns the “Impact Wrestling” name and the tape library associated with it.
One potential buyer would be WWE and they would have an interest in the library because some of their top stars such as Bobby Roode, Eric Young, AJ Styles, Kurt Angle, and others work for them. One of the challenges that WWE has in producing future documentaries is telling the stories of their performers while omitting their TNA run. If they buy the library then they can include that footage, something a guy like Kurt Angle would love because he has talked about how proud he was of his matches in TNA but they have been largely forgotten.
GFW creative team member John Gaburick was the person that reached out to good friend Kevin Dunn to open dialogue for sale talks last year before Anthem stepped into the picture. It’s always possible that Billy Corgan could step in but at this point, it would be hard for Anthem to turn down an offer from WWE, especially if they are willing to pay more. If that happens, then this could be the end of GFW as an active wrestling company. Also, that would mean that WWE would have ownership of the Broken trademarks, which is a good thing for Matt and Jeff Hardy.
Here are some more trending WWE news stories from the past week:
- WWE has signed another former ROH star
- Young Bucks issued a “cease and desist” from WWE
- WWE star to undergo surgery
- WWE stars not happy about Monday Night Raw being live on Christmas night
- Incident at talent meeting is what likely led to WWE slowing down Baron Corbin’s push
