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The Rise and Fall of Global Force Wrestling, Explained

Posted: May 17th 2022 By: Martin James Dickinson

Jeff Jarrett, alongside wife Karen Jarrett, formed Global Force Wrestling in April 2014, shortly after Jarrett had sold his minority share in TNA Wrestling to Dixie Carter. This wasn’t the first time Jarrett had started a wrestling company from the ground up, and with the success Jarrett had with TNA, what could possibly go wrong?

By August 2014, before even having a roster, GFW had announced partnerships with NJPW, AAA, as well as multiple smaller promotions in Europe, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. As part of New Japan’s relationship with GFW, Wrestle Kingdom 9 was presented on the American PPV market, featuring English commentary from Jim Ross and Matt Striker. This was not a regular occurrence at the time and was seen as a huge boon for GFW.

After the success of the Wrestle Kingdom event, GFW began booking house shows at minor league baseball stadiums. These house shows were not well attended, with the pictures from the events making the shows look very small time.

Undeterred, Jarrett announced a huge TV taping, recorded at the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas on July 24, 2015. The title of the GFW TV show was “Amped” and GFW would film 16 one-hour episodes and would feature tournaments to determine GFW’s first champions. GFW had some big names at the time take part in these tapings — the Good Brothers, Bobby Roode, Colt Cabana, Johnny Gargano, Mickie James, Nick Aldis, Shelton Benjamin and Tessa Blanchard to name a few.
global force wrestling gfw amped wrestling jeff jarrett

These tapings were done in an attempt to shop them around to different TV networks and Jarret himself was constantly promising an upcoming announcement of a TV deal. However, as the weeks and months passed, no announcement was made and suddenly, 16 episodes of out-of-date material didn’t seem very enticing.

Then, Jeff Jarrett did something weird.

Global Force Gold Was A Ponzi Scheme

On the GFW website, Jarrett released a (since deleted) video explaining how we can become a part of Team Jarrett with Global Force Gold. This video was a promotion for Karatbars, a German company who were a “bank-independent trading houses for merchandise and precious metals, especially Gold bullion in form of a card in small denominations.”

It was a Ponzi scheme. It was obviously a Ponzi scheme.

Karatbars had been criticised by internet scam busters as a pyramid scheme which lures people in under the guise of investing in gold. GFW and Jeff Jarrett were rightly roasted for the video, and GFW became a laughing stock in the wrestling scene, with many refering to them as "Global Farce Wrestling."

With no TV show, and a roster of talent quickly being signed up by other companies, things were looking bleak for GFW. Then, from out of nowhere, Jarrett had a surprising reprieve from none other than Impact Wrestling.

A deal was struck with Jarrett and Dixie Carter and what followed was a brief invasion angle with Jarrett’s GFW playing the heels, invading Impact shows. The invasion was merely an appetizer to keep GFW in the minds of wrestling fans, to make them “amped” for a future TV deal.

Unfortunately the invasion was… weak. The original TV tapings for GFW were over a year old at this point, meaning most of their big names had moved on to pastures new. Chris Adonis, PJ Black and Brian Myers were leading the Impact invasion for GFW…

To put things as blunt as possible, they are hardly the NWO.

The invasion didn’t last long, but things took an interesting turn behind the scenes as Anthem Entertainment bought Impact Wrestling from Dixie Carter and announced Jeff Jarrett as the chief creative officer. In April 2017, Karen Jarrett announced that GFW and Impact Wrestling had merged, adopting GFW as the company name, though behind the scenes, the merger was never completed officially. The Impact TV show was renamed to GFW Impact and all the GFW and Impact Titles were merged.

This rebrand didn’t last long however, as in September 2017, Anthem announced that Jarrett was taking an indefinite leave of absence and quickly abandoned all GFW branding. This was clearly a shock to Jarrett as he had been tweeting that morning about the future of GFW. There was much speculation for Jarrett’s sudden dismissal, with a source noting to PWInsider than the situation was “far uglier” than anybody realized. On October 27, 2017, Jeff Jarrett entered an in-patient rehabilitation facility.

And that was the end of Global Force Wrestling. Outside of a few optimistic tweets from Jarrett, GFW was no more. Jarrett re-joined WWE in 2018, thus ending the strange story of Global Force Wrestling.