Jeff Jarrett revealed in his latest podcast that his father conducted negotiations with the Ultimate Warrior about coming to TNA.
Last week on My World with Jeff Jarrett, the former WWE Intercontinental Champion and founder of Total Non-Stop Action spoke candidly about the former WWE names considered for the fledgling promotion.
This week, Double-J recalled the conversations he had with the Ultimate Warrior at “very top-level”.
Here’s what Jarrett said about the negotiations:
To put it back in context, I had never done business with him, our paths really never crossed in WWF. Me and [Warrior’s] paths never really crossed other than I met him on Thanksgiving day in 1985 and I met him with Sting. Our paths had never crossed, he was more a business colleague, he was a friend of my dad’s. I reached out, had some conversations but my dad was doing all the business negotiations. He was asking me some questions, very high level.
Jarrett followed up saying that Warrior among many legendary names asked about joining TNA:
“He has tremendous name value and going into June of 2002, we were only looking at 26 shows. ‘Hey man, come give us a try,’ I gave that pitch to a lot of folks through the first year, whether it was [Mr. Perfect], Rick Steiner or Hacksaw or the Road Warriors. We’re not asking you to sign an exclusive deal, we’re not asking you to do anything. We’re starting up a company, do you want to come work a few shows?”
Despite landing several ex-WWE talents like Ken Shamrock and Scott Hall, Ultimate Warrior didn’t make the jump. Jarrett explained it was difficult to convince talent to join TNA because of the uncertainty and his father’s “hot and cold” negotiation tactics.
Jarrett continued:
“I can vividly remember thinking to myself talent of 2002 has quite a bit of a different mindset than when [my father] was actively involved in an ownership role, it wasn’t the same mentality.”
“Dealing with talent post WCW and nothing else on the horizon, the underbelly is, am I jumping on this train or not? Who’s doing what, how’s it taking us? There wasn’t really any place to make a living, my dad dealing with the hot-cold switch of any talent, let alone Ultimate Warrior, I became very aware of that.”