TNA & GFW Join Forces… What Does This Mean?
As seen on the latest episode of Impact Wrestling, Jeff Jarrett with his wife Karen walked out to the six sided ring, kitted out in Global Force Wrestling gear announcing he will be having one final match at Slammiversary.
But what does this actually mean in the long run?
Let’s go back to the year 2002, when Jeff and his father Jerry Jarrett decided to start their own wrestling company. We were just a year over from WWE purchasing both WCW and ECW for pocket money. During that year, they acquired a huge amount of talent from those organisations, but one person they never brought over was Jarrett. This isn’t to say that he hasn’t ever appeared in a WWE/F ring. In fact he’s a multi-time Intercontinental champion. WWE were not interested in Jarrett’s talents anymore, and instead Vince Mcmahon did the unprofessional act of firing Jarrett from his WCW contract live on RAW, which was completely legit.
Humiliated, Jarrett went on to form Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling. A small company that was based in Nashville and operated by airing weekly cheap PPVs, until they started to gain some traction and gained a national audience on a syndicated television channel.
Throughout the late 2000’s, TNA became an organisation to reckon with. It may not have had the money that WWE had, but the talent far exceeded those of it’s northern competitor. Whilst audiences boo’d the top babyface night in and night out, TNA would showcase the younger talents of the industry in matches that became instant classics and must-see’s.
But heading into the new decade, TNA lost its way. They started to acquire more former WWE/WCW stars. Eventually the bright stars of the future, such as Christopher Daniels, Samoa Joe and AJ Styles had them dimmed in favour of Sting, Mick Foley, Kurt Angle, Booker T, Kevin Nash, Scott Steiner and others.
Then things went from bad to worse when Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan joined the organisation.
Eric Bischoff was a creative genuis back in the heyday of WCW, and was a fantastically evil general manager on RAW in the mid-2000’s. But he always felt like he was there as more of a name, a credit, an “executive producer” role as opposed to actually him wanting to be there. But it was Hogan who truly screwed the company.
Hogan suggested they go back to 4 sided rings, making TNA lose it’s unique identity with it’s recognisable ring. On top of that, a sudden weight restriction was put onto the X-Division. Turning it from a unique belt who’s division was based on wrestling style, into a mere light-heavyweight championship.
But it didn’t stop there, Hogan seemed to have a strange effect on people who worked high up in the company, and believed that what he thought was sudden gold that would launch the company into the stratosphere. Hogan pushed the company to move to Monday nights, to start a second Monday Night War, a war that lasted around 2 months with WWE absolutely annihilating TNA in the ratings. Back with WCW the Monday Night Wars was like England fighting Germany in the Second World War. But this one felt like North Korea fighting the entire United Nations. It was sad.
Eventually Jarrett’s role with the company started to get smaller and smaller. Jeff Jarrett wanted to try and turn the company around by buying it from Panda Energy, the deal almost happened but the reason why it stopped was because Panda Energy demanded that Dixie remain an integral part of the TNA brand, both backstage and in front of the camera, which Jarrett didn’t want to comply with. Due to this Jarrett handed in his resignation with the company in December of 2014 and, instead, focused his attention on creating a new wrestling promotion named Global Force Wrestling.
Jarrett and Carter seemed to have a falling out in the aftermath months. TNA talent are allowed to wrestle for other companies as long as it doesn’t interfere with their TNA commitments and if it isn’t broadcast on television, however they restricted talent from going to GFW to wrestle a match.
That was until recently, were Jarrett appeared on TNA television.
So, going back to our original question. What does this mean in the long run?
One of the prevalent theories making it’s way across the internet is that Jarrett has returned to buy the company, or add it to part of it’s Global Force Wrestling roster in some way, but certain spells doom for the once good promotion. After all, what does TNA get out of this cross over? Global Force Wrestling is the new company trying to establish itself amongst audiences who may not have even been aware of it’s existence. Even if it’s tough to believe, TNA are more well known than GFW at this point in time. As well as this, TNA are filming a bunch of their episodes in late July which would see them through to September, exactly the same time when Destination America can either extend their contract with the company or pull out completely leaving TNA without a home once again. Previously noted on The Suplah we pointed out that Destination America had signed ROH to the network, and that was already bad news for TNA as they could be testing ROH to see if that gets a bigger audience and better fan reaction than Impact Wrestling at the moment, so what is happening seems to support the theory that the company is going under and Jarrett has returned to wrap up the company’s last storylines before bringing the major stars over to GFW.
However, as reported with our affiliating website, WrestlingPundit, there hasn’t been any suggestions of a merger happening. Instead it could just be a way to send off the man who started the company in the correct and dignified way and officially start a new (and hopefully brighter) chapter in the book of TNA’s legacy.
Wrestling is an odd industry. Everybody says that anything can happen with nearly anything, but it holds most true with this form of entertainment. TNA is on the rocks, nobody will deny that, and the way the company has been handled these past few months is a masterclass in fuck-up-ery. We are still 3 months away from when TNA’s contract goes up in the air, and this could be a way to start a storyline to bow itself out… or maybe we’re just all secretly hoping that will be the case. (Let’s not forget… they’ve had God damn reverse ladder and cage matches. Seriously what the fuck guys?)
What do you think? Will GFW take over, or will we see a new and Jarrett-less start to TNA? Leave your thoughts below, and we could read them out on The Suplah!
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