WWE Hall of Famer Jeff Jarrett, who is also All Elite Wrestling’s Director of Business Development, took to an episode of his “My World with Jeff Jarrett” podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including Christian Cage leaving TNA for WWE in 2009 and how he thinks TNA couldn’t have done anything.
Jarrett said, “I think he had already kind of made up his mind. And I knew, and told Dallas and Panda [Energy] and probably told Dixie [Carter]. I don’t really think this is anything other than, he wants to go back to WWE to prove himself. I think we probably served the role that he wanted us to. He became champion, it was growth in his career. We did him a solid. He did us a solid.”
On not being able to outbid WWE:
“But at the end the day, we can’t outbid WWE really under any circumstance. And so, ‘Do we really want to put ourselves in a position that we’re overpaying a guy that we know it doesn’t fit our business model?’ So those kind of meetings that were really hard, were always hard for kind of — I’ll say for Dixie to absorb that, ‘Look Dixie, at the end of the day, we have a budget and we have to keep the entire team rolling in the same direction.’ You can get out ahead of your skis, and then all of a sudden you get some pay out of wax. Not saying Christian’s not worth it, but in our system we can only do so much. And so I don’t think there was money that needed to be discussed.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
