Jeff Jarrett spent well over a decade in TNA/IMPACT Wrestling. He wore many different hats as the company’s co-founder, lead creative figure, and as an on-screen talent. It was clear from how hard he worked that he really wanted the company to succeed…but not all of his ideas were successful.
In fact, one of the company’s more controversial gimmicks – of which there were many – was brought back at Jarrett’s request, even though some of the people within the company didn’t want it.
Back in 2008, TNA/IMPACT launched their own wrestling video game, which had its own story mode centered on a character named Suicide. To further capitalize on and promote the game, TNA’s power-brokers decided to create a real-life version of the Suicide character that would wrestle in the Impact Zone, effectively bringing the video game character to life.
By 2016, most people thought the character was dead, especially after having his name changed but not his attire. Then the character returned seemingly out of nowhere in 2017, and one wrestler has put that creative decision squarely on Jeff Jarrett’s shoulders.
Jeff Jarrett allegedly responsible for bringing “dumb character” back to TNA
Kaleb Konley, one of the many wrestlers to play the Suicide character, discussed the gimmick’s return on a recent episode of The A2theK Wrestling podcast and discussed why Jarrett is to blame for it.
“Jeff Jarrett is completely to blame for Suicide returning, he’s probably to blame for all of the Suicide stuff, honestly, I don’t know. I was just hanging out at home waiting for an opportunity to come my way and they had me under contract.
I got a call one day, and they said, ‘Do you want to do this?’. It was cool. At times it seemed directionless, but at the same time because of Suicide, I got to wrestle in Australia, I got to a couple of tours of England out of it, I got to wrestle in India for IMPACT, I got to see a whole lot of the world because of this dumb masked character.”
Aside from Konley, the Suicide character was also portrayed by Frankie Kazarian, Christopher Daniels, Akira Raijin, TJ Perkins, Jonathan Gresham, Taiji Ishimori, and Nash Carter.
h/t Fightful for the transcription