On a recent edition of his “My World” podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Jeff Jarrett explained why TNA Wrestling didn’t have the support from the internet wrestling community.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On why TNA didn’t have the support from the online community: “So my answer today is so different than kind of going through the era… AOL/Time Warner canceled wrestling. And at the time, Nitro and Thunder — I don’t know the exact, I hear different things. But they were certainly a top 10, maybe top five on both networks. So they were getting ratings, and sponsors wouldn’t even look their way, and ‘I’m going to start wrestling business’ during that time is yes, borderline insanity. And again, Twitter didn’t start till 2007. So it was… the message boards that were kind of a part of this. But for the big part was (Wade) Keller, obviously Dave Meltzer. I would say Mike Johnson, but that means I’m calling him out. Because it’s PWInsider, who Bob Ryder was a part of that, but Dave Scherer and I’ll call it kind of the wrestling media, if you will. Jason Powell, there were several others in there. And I think to their mindset, they were selling content, just like wrestling businesses are selling content, newsletters. And the access, fortunately, unfortunately, between my dad, I’ll call it the Dixie Carter camp that grew. However you want to say, there’s — I don’t even want to call them leaks; it’s just the nature of the business. And all the writers had sources and all that. And so it made for good content to create a sense of divisiveness, and this and that.
“And then just kind of — I’ll take as much blame or credit, whatever it may be — is that we didn’t hit it out of the park every time. So when you have a growing brand of hit and misses, growing the business, and then you have — I’ll call it the 8000-pound gorilla in WWE in the marketplace, all that. That was our barometer. There was just so much to kind of write about. And I think — and look, Meltzer was very opinionated, and he always had his sources. But the snowball that started out of, I’ll call it 2010, 2011 when the Hogan/Bischoff experiment or influx came in, and then it came to light that Dixie is running the show. And they took it out on the road, and that failed. There really became — it came easy, and I may be off on this, but it’s my perception, just kind of through my lens. It came really easy to cache everything as TNA LOL. Did we have a squeaky clean image from 2000 to 2009? Not at all. But the X-Division, the Knockouts, and the ratings continue to grow. We had a lot of bright spots. And at the end of the day, the revenue and profitability kept growing. And so I think so many people had said, ‘They’re going to fail.’ And I think they just kind of dialed into, ‘;Oh, they gotta fail.’ And then we didn’t. And they’re celebrating their 22nd anniversary. So hats off. And so, a fair shake is the specific question? Hey man, I was taught this from day one from specifically my grandmother. And (Jerry) Lawler would kind of harp on it from spot show to spot show. As long as you’re getting a reaction, you’re creating some type of emotion. That’s a good thing. When they’re radio silence. You’re in trouble. And people were never radio silent on TNA.”
On TNA not getting the benefit of the doubt from fans: “I couldn’t agree more. And here’s kind of another — so timing is everything. And when you went from the 90s, when it was really just print and a few message boards. And then by the early 2000s, and certainly in mid-2000s, and the late 2000s, here comes Twitter and everything with that. So we got into a completely new world of the age of instantaneous information, and a conversation going online and it can grow and grow and grow. But on the heels of the — I’ll call it the wrestling bubble. And Jesus Conrad, 20 years later they do a four-part episode on ‘Who Killed WCW?’ We’re right off the heels of that. The hardcore WCW fans, whether it’s Russo and his on-screen character, or the Bash at the Beach and what really happened there, and you know, just kind of that completely off-brand, if you will, ‘Vince McMahon and the WWE killed their competition, and that was a game-set match. Nothing else matters in the world of professional wrestling.’ That was the era that we know was really permeating there.
“And I really do think there was a very long tailwind in America that the war was over, there’s only one brand, and everything else is not just way below second-rate, it’s bad. So I think the divisiveness, timing, all kinds of things…. My point is that the ‘TNA LOL’ — look, did we add to that? Yeah but man, I think people really glossed over taking a company that started over on a Wednesday night pay-per-view only, is really the only means to start telling stories, to two hours in primetime on Spike and doing quite well and profitable. Like, that almost gets glossed over even today.”
