WWE Hall of Famer Jeff Jarrett, who is also All Elite Wrestling’s Director of Business Development, appeared on an episode of his “My World with Jeff Jarrett” podcast. In it, he discussed various topics, including Monty Brown not becoming the TNA World Champion at the height of his popularity.
Jarrett said, “My best recollection was, like any person who takes over creative, on the one hand you think, ‘I’ve gotta put my best foot forward. I’ve gotta make an immediate change.’ Maybe a wiser owl like Dusty who’s been there, it’s like, ‘Okay, let me have a little patience, a little build, let me think this thing out and book as much as long-term as I possibly can.’ I do remember me and Dusty having conversations. And I believed this from the beginning is that, ‘The last thing we want to do — not just to Monty but to any talent is — give them the title.’ And I’m talking about THE title, make them THE World Champ, the one that the whole promotion revolves around. [The last thing to do is] give a talent a title when he’s not ready. Because there’s only one way he can go, and it’s down. And having the metrics if you will, or the lack of metrics — this is prior to social media, so all of it was really in our gut. Yes the PPV [buyrate] was the biggest one, but television ratings were almost non-existent so you had to go on much more of a gut. So instead of as Arn would say, ‘Dusty cutting off Monty’s water,’ I’d say maybe he just curbed it a little bit and said, ‘Let me make sure. I’m sure when this guy’s ready, we’ll go with it.’ [Kevin] Nash, more of an established brand, if you will, [was a] safer bet early in the Dusty regime.”
On TNA holding shows at Universal Studios: “Like any — I don’t just say residency, because that’s not really the accurate word. But just like any business, you gotta get traction and get it going. And again, this is January of ’05. So we’d been there a year. It just takes time. And you know, this is early ’05. I mean, ‘07, ‘08, ‘09, it was — and we had changed the setup, and you could get a couple more hundred people in there when we went from tunnels on the left and the right, on the north and the south of the sides of the building. We just went to one stage at one end and opened things up, and had more money to invest in the set. I love the studio setting with 1,000 – 1,200 people in there. It’s loud, it’s raucous. We — again, different era, a different time. Those things don’t exist to this day. But at this time, Universal Studios was a park attraction, and so there were a certain number of park guests. And that’s people on vacation that we had to, by our legal agreement, a certain amount let in. And those were the ones that would come in and stay at the show, whole show, or half hour or whatever. And that’s why the turnover. And we had a monitor set up in the hall and all that. But what a fun process.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
