On the latest episode of his “My World” podcast, Jeff Jarrett reflected on the TNA one-year anniversary pay-per-view event in 2003 where he and Sting defeated AJ Styles and Syxx-Pac in the tag team main event matchup.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On bringing in Sting for his first TNA appearance: “I had worked with him in WCW, you know? We had been around each other a lot in WCW. And we wrestled each other in New Zealand. We wrestled…. anyway. But in those early years, Bob Carter and Dixie, they gave me approval to call Sting and start negotiations and all that. But in those early calls, Sting was like, ‘Why don’t you tell your dad to gimme a call?’ And they didn’t talk about money, but they just kind of talked — I’ll just say, just a feel good kind of conversation. But when we were having the conversations and all that — I don’t remember exactly, it might have been the day of or the day before that Sting agreed, ‘Yeah, I’ll come next week. One shot deal, we’ll leave it open-ended.’ Because that was the kind of running joke from the very beginning.
“Because Sting again, he’s the franchise player at WCW. At this stage, I would probably say that — I don’t say he had no interest in going to WWF, that’s not true. But he just didn’t think it was really in the cards, I don’t think he’s really sure where he wanted to take his life. But, ‘Do I really step back into this pay-per-view-only company in the States?’ Because he agreed to do the Andrew McManus shows, they were out of the country, they were kind one-offs. There was no binding, he was getting paid great money. It was in his eyes, maybe an independent, more situation. ‘Right now, I’m gonna go to work here.’ The thing that I believe that got Sting to our very first show was one guy, and that’s my father. Kind of the emotional heartstrings were tugged in me and Sting’s conversation, and he’s like, ‘You know, your dad gave me–‘ And he never ever forgot that. The other day we were having a conversation with someone in catering. And Sting looked across the table and said, ‘You know, Jeff’s dad gave me like the first start.’ Sting’s really never forgot that kudos to him.”
On the rough go of the early episodes: “The first 26 episodes, I’ll go into that. Scratching and clawing, and we just tried to put on the very best show every week. It was that simple. The Health South in the first 90 days, lose the investor, Panda Energy International stepped up, the Carter family stepped up, ‘All right, let’s get our kind of footing,’ if you will. We’re going right into the holidays, we had to figure out that holiday schedule and all that. Coming into the new year we’re like, ‘Okay, let’s kind of get that budget.’ We knew that all in the entire company was no more than a hundred grand. When I think about that, Conrad, we were running the entire operation on less than $100,000 a week. And that was everything, the revenue off pay-per-view. And we were starting to get some international stuff. India, Australia, we were working on different things. We had kind of got things, I’ll say semi-manageable.
“Vut when we did that Jarret-Raven match. And look again, we couldn’t get exact numbers, but we knew it did well. We also knew that, ‘had to kinda extrapolate. If we’re turning away as many people as we could let in the building, that’s gotta be an indicator. Anyway, I say all that to say that, that was April. I’m not sure what we did in May, but June — of course, we would’ve liked to have a three or four week runway, but we didn’t. But we also said on this anniversary, Sting’s a huge get. We wanted, and he wanted to kind of feel out — not just me. I mean everything about the company. And man, boy did he get an experience on week one. But, so grateful to this day that Sting gave us a chance. And things worked out through the years for us, because he was a needle mover, off camera for damn sure in our programs as far as gaming and licensing and international deals and all that.”
