WWE Hall of Famer Jeff Jarrett, who is also All Elite Wrestling’s Director of Business Development, took to an episode of his “My World with Jeff Jarrett” podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including wanting to work in ECW.
Jarrett said, “I have had conversations with Tommy Dreamer, probably a few with Bubba [Ray Dudley]… I mean, I would have loved to have come in and, you know, like work a story with Dreamer. I’m the anti-ECW. It would have worked.”
On TNA and AEW’s strengths and weaknesses:
“I believe — and I’ll say this. The capital, the financial unstability of TNA and the financial stability of AEW, right out of the gate makes it completely night and day. I’m very, unbelievably grateful for Richard Scrushy, that’s at the end of the day, startup capital. Bob Carter, no doubt about it. So I’m not — but I’m trying to answer this question as best I can, completely night and day. I think the climate of not just the professional wrestling business. But just — when you really look at cable television [in] 2001, 2002, and 2003, it’s a different animal than it was in 2018 and ’19. So I think the landscape of television — and then if you really want to get into the micro, specifically the wrestling business. Coming off the Attitude Era, wrestling — I’ve gone into ad nauseam in multiple episodes, wrestling was a four-letter word. So very, very much different. And then you know, the business — and I’ve often kind of referred to it, you can call it The Rock and the Stone Cold Effect. There were so many people watching the Attitude Era, and I’m talking about high school kids that watched it on TV and said, ‘Hey, I want to do that. I want to do that.’ Fast forward 10 years later, the independent scene didn’t even resemble what it looked like when we started. So, the talent pool was massively different on the entry point into the industry… So that’s kind of the three, maybe the differences. The similarities? I think the loyal, fanatical fan base. And look, I was not at AEW in in day one days. Conrad, you’ve got a much better picture than that. But you know, I’ll call it from — we’ve talked about it. 2002 to 2010, what was a fanbase of TNA that was super die-hards. When the six sided ring was taken away, love them, hate them or indifferent, the Hogan-Bischoff era, it became a new brand in so many different ways. We changed the name of the company. You know, Dixie wanted nothing to do with TNA and made sure every little remnant of it, the best she could, kind of put it away.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
