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 Scott D’Amore’s departure from TNA Wrestling.
Jarrett said, “All I can do is share my personal experience, and as I sat didn’t and kind of drilled through everything, without knowing any of the details, and as things trickled out, you kind of hear, and I don’t know what’s true or not, but the one thing that was in there that he tried to buy it. If this is true, he wanted to spend more money. Obviously, I’ve shared this on the podcast, and I take full responsibility for my screw-ups, but the reality was, when I look back on my time, is that I was under the impression that budgets were gonna be bigger. There was gonna be more of an investment. The strategies were gonna be different. So in a lot of ways, I said, okay, that was in 2017. So from 2018 to 2024, six years, I think you have to drill down into, I don’t know the books, but the Asper family is very wealthy. They’ve made a lot of money through the years off of the television industry and cable, AXS, and Pursuit, and they did the merger of the acquisition. All that being said, I don’t know what TNA’s true financials really look like. It’s obviously Len Asper’s sole decision.”
He also talked about IMPACT Wrestling re-branding back to TNA Wrestling and how that has given them more buzz now than they have had in years.
“So I asked myself, what did the profit and loss look like over the last six years because there’s no way that you do the rebrand and you have, maybe it’s just the Internet, but it felt like the most buzz on the company in the last three years, four years, maybe longer than that. They had quite a bit of buzz. Just the timing of it all is very perplexing. Again, you don’t ever judge a book by its cover, but I don’t know what the financial picture looks like. But the timing of it all, I’ll say this, they’ve got their work cut out, no doubt. Nobody’s irreplaceable. No talent, no executive, nobody’s irreplaceable in this industry. That being said, what is their plan in place? That’s what I’ve yet to hear. Who is the wrestling guy [that will replace D’Amore?] I think that at the end of the day, that is an enormous component of who is steering the ship creatively. I wish [new TNA President] Anthony Cicione well. It just surprised me, the timing of everything.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
