Jeff Jarrett gave his thoughts on various topics on his latest My World with Jeff Jarrett while covering the TNA Slammiversary 2017 pay-per-view event. Here are the highlights:
Working with Alberto El Patron:
“We hit it off on day one. I remember correctly, one of the stories I remember is that, uh, you know, he was a megastar for Vince and Hot there for a while. And for us to get him, it was a big get. And, look, I thought it was him. And lastly is what we were gonna build toward. I thought two big, just they both could go. And I thought it was gonna be, uh, just a really a marquee match. But, um, ed nor home, and he didn’t mean any harm outta this, but he sh he, he snapped a photo of Patron in the Ring in Orlando, the tapings before this, and kind of gave away our surprise. But it wasn’t that big a deal, like, oh my God. But anyway, everybody was excited to get Alberto on. Um, hard worker. I tell you what, as far as a working relationship is like, I don’t wanna say employee or, but that’s kind of where I’m going with it. He always wants, and he would tell you, I wanna overdeliver. What do you want me to do? He worked his ass off and came with the best can-do attitude, helping others, not selfish. How do we get involved? I mean, he was, he was all in and he got over immediately in the impact zone with that crowd and got over the people and saying, when, you know, across the board leading up to slam anniversary, he worked his ass off, is what I’ll say. Man, I’m glad to hear you say that because I do feel like you just gave some, uh, as they say, flowers to two guys who often don’t really get ’em. First of all, Josh Matthews had been on quite a tear on social media at the time, proclaiming that he was the best wrestling announcer of all time. And of course he knew saying that is going to get him heat. And boy did it work. There were a lot of people back then, and I think still to this day who hate Josh Matthews because of that. Guess what, it was a character folks. He wanted you to hate him. That translates into the ring as well. Not many people assume that you know, he does bad business and he’s not a good guy and he’s selfish and he’s-unreliable and there’s all this negativity surrounding his name. And I have to admit, I don’t know, I’ve never worked with him. I may have met him once, but just in passing. But to hear, oh man, he was great, a hard worker and, and not selfish and blah, blah blah. That’s great to hear. We don’t hear that sort of thing about him enough maybe. Yeah, and look, I’m not gonna shy away. Look, we look and with my own story, we go through some dark periods where we do dumb shit, bad shit, horrible, we, whatever it may be. And I know that he’s had some dark times, I think he would admit that some dark places. I have no idea where he is today, right? I mean, but I know my one-on-one relationship and it was a working professional relationship. I couldn’t have asked for anything anymore in 2017. Because when he showed up, he looked, and he’s second generation, uh, at least second generation, right? We bonded over generational being in the business knowing that, hey man, uh, and I’ve told him, look, we’re you’re, you’re the top guy, the tip-top guy, but with that comes all the responsibility. You gotta make yourself look good and everybody around you good. And he had no idea putting that on his shoulders and rolling with it.”
On the importance of the India deal:
“That contractually, we had to go shoot television in the Indian market by contract. So who would’ve ever thought left that whole, Jeff and Impact parted ways, and now I’m back and being a part of, say this diplomatically, we’ve already covered many, many times. The brand went through some tough times with the Corgan lawsuit and all that. So here I am with Anthem and so many things going in so many different directions. But one of the main deals was we’ve gotta get to Indian-produced tv because we were looking at re-up at the time. It was the largest revenue generator internationally and across the board in Impact. It was a big deal, a really important deal. Anthem was brand new to the business. I mean, brand new to the business. And in America, when you rig, uh, lights Conrad, you know, you gotta be tethered and OSHA rules. And over there, in Film City and Mumbai, you have wooden ladders up against, I mean, they weren’t tethered. Those guys would be shivering one of my top five as far as wooden ladders up against. I mean, it was. They weren’t tethered. Those guys would shove me up and cuz when we got there, they were still building the set and it was a fantastic experience. The episode we’re talking about today, Slammiversary 2017, is one of my top five as far as being a part of putting things together, one of my favorite shows in my entire career. But India was a huge part of kinda getting things.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit with an h/t to Wrestling Headlines for the transcription.