Dark Side of the Ring: Jeff Jarrett & the Battle for TNA Review
Vice has up on YouTube the whole three parts of this series on the Jeff Jarrett story as well as the formulation and ups (and downs) of TNA wrestling. It pretty much covers Jeff Jarrett’s upbringing in the first part through his eventual runs in the WWF and WCW as well as the tragedy of Owen Hart and his first wife. Gradually, the story evolves into the formation of TNA and its evolution, leading towards its various problems where Jeff would eventually lose control. All three are up on YouTube via Vice and I’m linking just the first one.
The first part covers Jeff Jarrett’s background, talking about his father, growing up as a 3rd generation wrestler (or someone involved in pro-wrestling). We see how he’s groomed slowly to enter into wrestling, forsaking college because he smells the money from his father’s territory. For myself, I recall Jeff Jarrett back in the USWA days and even teaming with Jerry Lawler. I can’t recall whom he feuded with but remember how Jerry cut a promo about Jeff “teaming with the devil himself,” which was a standard Lawler type of promo.
Eventually, Jeff joins the WWF where he gets an infamous gimmick as a wannabe country singer with the song “Ain’t I Great” matching his catch phrase of spelling his name outloud like some used cars salesman. He has a solid run for a few years there but never breaks through the main event, despite having very good matches with people like Shawn Michaels. In turn, he bails and shows up in WCW for a year or two as part of the Horsemen (or tried to be) for a short stint (and no one wanted him in that role). I don’t think the Dark Side covered that portion. However, they did show him returning and dealing with Owen Hart’s tragic demise, the whole “the show must go on” and how Jeff managed to compartmentalize the situation at the time since his match would be next. Another funny bit was an infamous story of Vince wanting Jeff to job for Chyna with the IC title on the way out so supposedly Jeff held up Vince for 200k.
After leaving WWF for a 2nd time, he returns to WCW with the guitar gimmick, uses the horrible “slapnuts” catch phrase and would one day win the main title. Part of that was due to Vince Russo showing up and convincing the (mis-)management he was responsible for the WWF’s success via the Attitude Era. But Jeff’s run would eventually come to an end later on when Vince McMahon would purchase the pennystock-like assets of WCW and fire Jeff on live TV to embarrass him, which is thought to be from the grudge of holding Vince for that 200k.
Having nowhere else to go, Jeff with his father Jerry Jarrett, spin up TNA (actually it was a version of the NWA and later adapted the name TNA). Jeff talks about his vision for the show being a hodgepodge of styles as well as pushing what would become the modern style in North America, particularly through the X-Division. They did try to be different in having the 6-sided ring and the special X-Division matches that would highlight lighter, more agile guys (except Samoa Joe) effectively do an advanced cruiserweight style. That was in addition to the tag division, the heavyweight division and the Knocksout division (which came a little later).
The one crucial missing person during this period from the show was AJ Styles. While there were other important people, AJ Styles pretty much would be the real homegrown star here in becoming synonymous with the moniker “Non-Stop Action”. As the company quickly grew, the problem was going to be money. Even though the seed money was from Jeff and Jerry, they wouldn’t be able to make payroll at one stage. Their main backer at this point had a problem with their CFO and effectively pulled the plug.
In turn, they went hunting for a new source and came across Dixie Carter, whose family was connected to a company called Panda Energy. After hooking up, Panda Energy (via Dixie’s father) through them a lifeline but at the cost of forcing Dixie to be close. Things weren’t going well behind the scenes as Dixie started to take control. Some key office people like Jim Cornette, Dutch Mantell and Scott D’Amore would be gone at different stages as Dixie would slowly gain power behind the scenes.
Now, let me pause and mention that there was a small period between say 2005-2006 where TNA was really good. I think Russo got the boot for a period (there’s a famous “shoot” with Piper blaming Russo for Owen Hart’s death in the before era) and the book had been under Scott D’Amore. I remember that the wrestling itself wasn’t bad but the booking felt incredibly stale. At some point, Scott D’Amore got pushed aside and Dutch, etc. took over. Also, they acquired Christian Cage and Kurt Angle. I thought Christian did his best singles work during this period both with his promos and in ring. Unfortunately, he didn’t enough time to establish himself since Kurt Angle would make his entrance and that was a HUGE deal for TNA. There were a lot of eager, hungry talent who wanted to work with Kurt and we got to see stuff like that tremendous Kurt Angle vs Samoa Joe meeting.
Along that period, they started to establish their tag team division with Beer Money and their Knockouts division. Awesome Kong and Gail Kim would have one of the best female pro-wrestling matches on North American soil with a great basic storyline that hooked people and drew. More Knockouts would come in and there seemed to be some hope that a serious female division could receive more TV time.
However, things wouldn’t stay great as Russo came back to work and it became evident that things were going to be stupid. I don’t remember the exact match but I recall something involving either the Dudley Boys or Abyss and the crowd vehemently chanting, “Fire Russo!” because they knew anything stupid would involve him.
I think incidents like that allowed Dixie to get more sway and bring in Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan. But many people online at the time knew the minute Hulk entered he would bring his friends. Sure enough, the Nasty Boys and Hall/Nash appeared. The Nasty Boys in particular looked awful because Knobbs was in horrible shape (really fat) while Hall was dealing with his own demons. For myself as a fan of what I had hoped would become an alternative, I knew this promotion was dead in the water. Bad vignettes or backstage promos would happen like the Main Event Mafia, which was another Russo idea of the Young Boiz vs the Old Fart Gang would happen. I know a few people have accused some of those people that TNA acquired of using this opportunity as a “rest and vest” strategy. Considering Hulk lasted 4 years, you can tell he was just trying to suck this promotion dry until the next thing appeared for him.
The show mentioned the abysmal failure of the re-ignited “Monday Night Wars” when Bischoff convinced Dixie to move their TV to Mondays to compete against Raw. The various talking heads admitted that the idea was bad because TNA didn’t have the production value of Raw. And it’s true because TNA had mostly broadcast from the Impact Zone, which looked small. Even for PPVs, they used that tiny Universal Studios set to conduct everything. At least with Nitro, you’d get different arenas around the country with better pyro and crowds. But no one wanted that Monday Night Wars competition. It wasn’t the same condition where the WWF had become horribly stagnant and needed a major kick in the pants via a worthy competitor with deep pockets and big names.
They did cover the Karen Angle/Jarrett love affair, which in all honesty I don’t remember happening on TV. At that stage, I might’ve just zoned out and had been watching more WWF or returned to Japan. But seeing the small clips of it play out on the Dark Side, I imagine I would’ve just found something else to do given the choice to watch that kind of crap. Heck, I really hated the whole Elizabeth – Macho Man wedding at that one Summerslam because it was bad. At least, the Uncle Elmer ceremony got one good line from Jesse Ventura.
Also, they covered Jeff’s first wife’s passing. That probably was the most emotional part of the show because no one said anything bad about her. Even Scott Steiner had a moment where he needed to leave the room. But you could tell the emotional toll it took on Jeff where he still had to run the company and take care of his children.
This later episode moved into Dixie Carter the bitch. There’s no other way to put it. The one person that they tried to get to show up simply decided she wanted no part to at least defend herself. So in all likelihood she moved on. But I think wrestling fans of TNA and many of the people involved with the promotion would universally say she really had no business being there. The minute she started showing up on TV as a character was the official beginning of the end for her. The only positive one could say about her is that she’s a MILF type but it’s hard to say why anyone would want someone of that nature. But everyone involved practically buried her here and rightfully so.
Panda Energy/Dixie’s father would put their foot down and pull the plug, the company would be sold to Anthem where it’s basically a zombie promotion at this stage used as a kind of rehabilitation and training center for ex-WWE wrestlers or potential new signees (which they might not get in the future). They did talk about Jeff forming Global Wrestling and how he got tricked into merging it with TNA that led to him breaking down completely and becoming an alcoholic.
The redemption part was him hitting rock bottom and his wife (apparently) being responsible for getting him back on track via rehab. They used the WWE Wellness group (or whatever it’s called) and he committed to becoming sober. The one thing here he admits that I think is interesting was admitting what made him an addict. Effectively, it’s the various heavy burdens he’s been carrying for a while from his distant father growing up, Owen’s passing, his wife’s cancer, his creation of TNA (and Global) getting ripped away from him. So the addiction was more of a way of coping to try and forget those issues or bury them deeper.
Of course, they talk about his WWE Hall of Fame induction and where he is now with AEW and what he’s doing behind the scenes as a trainer, working with younger talent, his entry into the Owen Hart Cup tournament, etc. So there was a light at the end of the tunnel for this show for him. They also mentioned how TNA still has Jeff’s DNA inside of it, even though TNA in its current stage of undeath is a far cry from where it was at its peak.
Either way, pretty good start of the latest Dark Side of the Ring season. Can’t wait for the others!
