In 2002, Jeff Jarrett and his father together founded NWA: Total Nonstop Action (NWA-TNA), which is today’s version of Impact Wrestling. After departing the promotion in 2014, Jarrett founded another new promotion, Global Force Wrestling (GFW).
Bill Goldberg signed a one-year contract with World Wrestling Entertainment in March 2003. At that time, he won the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. Goldberg returned to WWE in 2016 and wrestled several big-money matches up until last year.
On a recent episode of his My World podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Jarrett discussed former WCW stars not wanting to sign with TNA in 2003 due to Vince Russo. Jarrett also revealed whether Goldberg had any serious talks with the promotion at the time.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On whether Goldberg had serious talks with TNA: “Not at this point. I think what Dixie had a lunch with him several years later that I think you could classify on Dixie’s part for sure substantial. I don’t think on Bill’s part and it’s strictly about money. Barry Bloom repped him all these years. Bill made a lot of money at WCW he made a lot of money at WWE. That, you know, Bill’s a business man first and foremost. So, I never viewed any of the conversations with Bill substantial strictly off of there isn’t enough money there for Bill to come.”
On whether he ever questioned using Vince Russo, or if if it was ‘just wrestling’ when stars didn’t want to come to TNA: “Essentially just wrestling a nice way to say it. But, in the fact that I think it would be an easy way for — and I’m just using Bill, or plug in any wrestler you want, ‘I’m not coming there.’ I mean, Sean Waltman had a good relationship with my father and he had issues with Vince Russo. So, was it really the money or did he really want to come or not want to come, or was it Vince? But I always looked at it as wrestling in 2002, 2003 we’re talking about.”
On criticism of Russo: “You know, Vince had his success at WWF and then we’ll say he didn’t have success at WCW. But who did have success at WCW? I was there in ’99, 2000 until the doors shut. So, if you want to put everything on Vince, that’s just not really a reality. Did he make some, I’ll call them mistakes, or flaws or maybe? Bad booking or bad angles, that happens all day, everyday in our industry because creative is subjective. But, it goes without saying just as you said, Sean Waltman, Sting, Goldberg and several others, Mike Tenay, others that didn’t. I think the easiest way is, and maybe if Mike Tenay would have sat down with me and he did, but I’m just saying. I think his line of thinking from a logical perspective just does the good outweigh the bad or the bad outweigh the good… My delusional optimism sometimes was a blessing for me and also sometimes it was a curse. I think to this day sometimes I’m not sure which it was, but yeah those points were always in the back of my mind. Just the fact of getting Jim Cornette and Vince Russo to work together from time to time was maybe a challenge that I just said, ‘I’m gonna get this done one way or another because they’re both valuable to the industry’… I always saw the best, in my mind, out of everybody.”
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