WWE Hall of Famer Jeff Jarrett recently spoke on his podcast, “My World with Jeff Jarrett,” about a variety of professional wrestling topics including Cody Rhodes losing to Roman Reigns at WWE WrestleMania 39:
“Will Cody and the WWE Universe be able to recreate that groundswell of ‘Finish the story,’ and the story being he left, charted his way, went out, all the independent promotions, all the groundswell, and he came back, and it’s no secret that the touring champion or the lead singer of a rock band or however we wan to slice it, yes, there’s an evolution of it, the fact that we’re talking about it as super successful means there was no right or wrong call. It’s totally subjective.”
“This is something that Jerry Lawler, my dad, Jackie Fargo, ‘Handsome’ Jimmy Valiant, one time sat me down and kind of gave me this kind of mindset. There’s something about a gut feeling, and sometimes promoters go with their gut. My gut still told me it would have been the right move. I don’t think it would have hurt Roman, I don’t think it would have hurt The Bloodline. I don’t think, if we wait a year, I don’t think, because we waited a year, there’s gonna be that many more eyeballs, there’s gonna be that much exponentially grown business. All the, ‘He didn’t do it this year, and we’re gonna do it next year because of X,Y, and Z,’ that’s still TBD. I think my gut tells me they missed the opportunity. I may be wrong, but I may be right. We will see. It was a hell of a match, a hell of a finish, and it’s funny how, a lot of the audiences will say, ‘Oh, this run in there and that run in there, oh they would never do that in the world title match.’ This match had been built and it’s the WrestleMania main event of night two, and they had five people run in. You talk about the layer upon layer upon layer, the Screwjob of all Screwjobs. The creative’s subjective. The business metrics of Cody going out and yeah, they do big business where Roman’s on his live events, and maybe that’s just kind of the live event promoter in me. But Roman doesn’t make all the shows, Cody will, and so what would those numbers be if you had Cody going to Wichita, Kansas, [or] even an A and B market. Roman’s schedule is, and god bless him, he’s worked his butt off to arrive at that point. Hat’s off to him in do many ways, but the business metrics. Would Cody set a record year in merchandise sales?”
You can check out the complete podcast below:
(h/t to Colin Tessier for the transcription)
