Jeff Jarrett Discusses How His 2018 Return To WWE Came Together
Jeff Jarrett has explained how his WWE return in 2018 happened, which led to the Hall of Famer doing several different jobs for the company.
During his 35+ year career as a professional wrestler, Jeff Jarrett has worked for a lot of companies. The current AEW Director of Business Development also worked for WWE three separate times, he worked for WCW twice and created/ran TNA Wrestling starting in July 2002 for a long run.
Jarrett has also been part of other promotions as well since wrestling is in his blood since his grandmother was a promoter, his father Jerry was a promoter/booker and Jeff started wrestling as a teenager.
In 2018, Jarrett was brought back to WWE for the Hall of Fame, which was a bit of a surprise because it was 19 years since he was a part of the company. After the Hall of Fame, Jarrett did some other work in the company.
On a recent episode of his “My World” podcast, Jarrett opened up about how his WWE return took place. Jeff noted that his wife Karen really helped him out when he needed it most.
“As ironic as it may or may not be so quick, cliff notes, 2017 of October was the darkest period of my life. And that’s when, you know, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. And by the grace of God went into alcohol treatment. And that was, you know, (wife) Karen (Jarrett) was, yeah, she was ready to kill me for sure. But, you know, we gotta get him help. And so, Bruce Prichard had worked at IMPACT with her. She knew Bruce and she knew Road Dogg, you know, different buddies.”
“So she had reached out to Brian (James aka Road Dogg) reached out to Bruce, just I need help. And they just immediately went, boom, we’re, we’re gonna get on the phone with WWE. And so that was kind of my first entry back into Jeff Jarrett, at least being in the conversation after all those years.”
From there, Jeff Jarrett spoke about when he got contacted about being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2018 along with a surprise Royal Rumble appearance in 2019.
“And then coming out of that, and I’ve told this story, I’ll never forget it. I was getting ready for church. And I was already ready, Karen was in our bathroom getting ready for church. And I got a text and said, Hey, can you chat? Yep. Chat, hey man, Vince (McMahon) would like you in the Hall of Fame. What do you think? And so 2018 was the Hall of Fame year.”
“And then from there, Royal Rumble and you know, hey, do you want to produce some matches? And then me and Vince struck up a conversation and I said, Vince, I want to do more. And he goes, can you be at the office next Tuesday? Mike, this is all within 30 days. So yeah, so had that and went up and full time, you know, on the, you know, CWT, creative writing team.”
“But yeah, in creative as part of the creative writing team for the first, probably six months, but that’s really just travelling with Vince at the shows, observing and all that, and probably, I don’t know, 30 or 40 [days], no longer than that, but three or four months, when I got on the plane, he just said, ‘Hey, man, stick around.’
As he continued, Jeff Jarrett talked about how Vince McMahon wanted Jeff to do other things in WWE as well.
“And then that he said, I’d like for you to kind of dive off into live events. And I was just like, oh, yeah, I’ll do that. Then we did that. And then the pandemic, hit no more live events, and he moved me over into international. And that’s something that has been right up my alley, I feel lucky that I got that opportunity to kind of look at and learn.”
“I mean, you know, TNA is one learning ground, through the Global Force days also had an international agent who, again, continued education, but then seeing the WWE system, from an international perspective, I learned a lot, amazed a lot. And then I think that can really help us, Chris, as I sit here today, moving into the future with AEW.”
Even at 55 years old, Jarrett continues to wrestle for All Elite Wrestling. He competed in the January 6th AEW Battle of the Belts V event with Jay Lethal in a losing effort against the AEW Tag Team Champions, The Acclaimed.