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With GFW, Jarrett wrestling tradition continues

Posted: Apr 12th 2015 By: Nate Rau

Christine Jarrett earned her way in the professional wrestling business with an unmatched intellect, those who knew her best say, but as a woman in a rugged, testosterone-fueled industry, she occasionally had to show her claws.

Literally.

Jerry Jarrett, her son and eventual business partner, remembers the time in the 1960s when an out-of-town promoter with gangster ties threatened to "paper the town," an insider term for printing fliers exposing professional wrestling as scripted. Nick Gulas and Roy Welch, who co-owned the regional territory where Christine "Teeny" Jarrett ran the business-side operation, were vexing about what to do when the angry promoter walked through the doors.

"And my mother just went off on him," Jerry Jarrett said. "She grabbed him in the face and stuck her nails so hard in his jaws, squeezing his mouth she put holes in his skin. She said, 'If you don't leave this town, I'll kill you!' Teeny became a legend in that situation. And the result was she gained enormous respect from Nick, and Roy and all the wrestlers."

Christine Jarrett rose from selling tickets to shows at the old Hippodrome entertainment venue across from Centennial Park in the 1940s to co-owning a regional wrestling promotion that packed venues in four states and helped her retire as a multi-millionaire. She climbed the ladder when women were virtually unheard of as wrestling promoters.

Seven decades later, her grandson Jeff Jarrett is continuing the family tradition of bold, audacious pursuits in professional wrestling. At a time when the WWE is the unchallenged leader in the world of professional wrestling, Jeff Jarrett, the Nashville native and former WWE superstar, has launched a new promotion built on international partnerships, creative marketing strategies and untapped in-ring talent.

With his Global Force Wrestling, headquartered in Nashville, Jeff Jarrett is hoping to offer hardcore wrestling fans a new option to sink their teeth and dollars into, while also giving a United States pipeline to major promotions in Japan, Mexico, Germany and South Africa.

With GFW getting off the ground, Nashville has quietly re-emerged as a pillar of the wrestling business. In addition to GFW, Total Nonstop Action (TNA), is headquartered in Music City and has emerged as the No. 2 promotion in the country.

"Nashville has a really proud wrestling tradition," said Mike Mooneyham, a professional wrestling columnist and editor with South Carolina's The Post and Courier. "It's sort of been one of the main headquarters of old-time southern wrestling. Nashville certainly has the roots and the strong history and it's a good city for wrestling."
Jerry Jarrett with his mother Christine ?Teeny? Jarrett

Global force

Unlike other independent promotions that have emerged over the last decade, analysts say GFW is truly an internationally focused business. The company has reached marketing and talent-sharing partnerships with top promotions in Mexico, Japan, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Germany and Ireland.

And GFW has secured an early victory that established Jeff Jarrett's marketing chops. GFW served as the promotional partner for New Japan's Wrestle Kingdom 9 pay-per-view in January. Jeff Jarrett said the event was a massive success, reaching a higher audience than ever in the United States and attracting fans from around the globe to purchase the pay-per-view.

GFW announced earlier this month that it will begin television tapings at the Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas in July. The company will also have a live event tour, though no dates have been announced.

Jeff Jarrett also hasn't disclosed his talent roster, but that news is coming soon, and he said there will be wrestlers from around the globe in addition to new faces from the United States. By sharing talent with promotions from other countries, Jeff Jarrett is harkening to the days when professional wrestling was a regional business in America.

He said independent talent is better than ever across the world because of what he calls the "Rock effect," which is a generation of young aspiring wrestlers who grew up watching wrestling during the Attitude Era when larger-than-life characters such as The Rock headlined the industry.

"In the '80s and '70s, there were 22 regional promotions around the country," Jeff Jarrett said. "You'd have six or eight guys that were the mainstays and would pretty much stay there. Everybody else would come in for three months and move out. It kept everybody fresh in the minds of the fans.

"This isn't revolutionary in my mind, but I'm doing the same thing on a global level to get talent from all these different promotions. To me, it helps everybody out."
Jeff Jarrett as a wrestler.

Perhaps the biggest question currently confronting GFW is which cable network will air its content. Jeff Jarrett has already partnered with a top Hollywood production company and last week announced a partnership with Knoxville-based Bandit Lites to handle the crucial job of lighting the ring for his shows in Las Vegas.

Jeff Jarrett said last month he had been in talks with three networks, but he added that GFW will offer an array of content for free online.

Analysts say the timing is right for GFW to enter the marketplace. While the WWE has conquered the industry with the world's most recognizable wrestlers and even its own subscription-based network, hardcore wrestling fans have become disenchanted in recent years because it focuses more on pageantry than in-ring action.

"His model is absolutely viable," said Jason Martin, who worked in professional wrestling for a decade and now hosts the weekly wrestling talk show "Squared Circle Radio" on 104.5 The Zone. "Jeff Jarrett is a smart guy and I feel like his heart is in the right place.

"With his partnerships in Mexico and Japan and his background as a wrestler, there might not be anybody better positioned to reach those hardcore wrestling fans, the real wrestling fans, who are really turned off by the WWE over the last year or so."

When the WWE purchased its top competition WCW in 2000, it created a monopoly. Chaired by icon Vince McMahan, the WWE is a publicly traded company with more than 1.3 million subscribers to its WWE Network initiative.

"A lot of people have bemoaned the change in wrestling where Vince can flourish and nobody makes a dime," said Jim Cornette, a wrestling promoter, author and former on-screen manager for WWE. "Jeff has gone out and done something about it."

The family business

The Jarrett family's long history in the professional wrestling business began out of necessity. Christine Jarrett was a single mother who needed to provide for her children so she took a variety of jobs to help make ends meet. She caught on working the box office for Gulas and Welch shows at the Hippodrome.

"My earliest memory was we went up to the office and there sat Gorgeous George ('50s and '60s wrestling icon)," Jerry Jarrett said. "She rolled his hair and she asked for a couple of bobby pins for us to have as souvenirs. He said, 'OK, you can have them, but they're not bobby pins, they're Georgie pins.' I've got some Georgie pins. And that memory stuck in my brain the rest of my life."

Before long, Jerry Jarrett found his way into the family business. He worked as a referee and a wrestler, and then promoted smaller regional shows.

Jerry Jarrett especially had a knack for the creative aspect of the business ? deciding which wrestlers to push, conjuring angles for in-ring conflict and spotting future superstars. He helped break the Ultimate Warrior and Sting, who were among the many wrestlers who did tours through Nashville.

"As a booker, he could take a piece of talent and expose his strong points and hide his weaknesses to find ways that fans could really like the guy, or really hate the guy," Cornette said.

Jerry Jarrett worked his way up and became a partner with Gulas, before the two had a falling out and went their separate ways. Christine "Teeny" Jarrett and Jerry Jarrett then partnered together and promoted shows in several regional towns, including weekly shows at the Nashville fairgrounds.

Cornette, who began selling programs in Louisville and worked his way up to the top of the industry, said sold-out shows and booming television ratings were the norm in the Jarrett territory.

"My mother died a multimillionaire because of her interest in (our territory)," Jerry Jarrett said.

Jeff Jarrett, who was a star basketball player at Aquinas College, got the itch to join the family business as well. He excelled in the ring, working his way up to the WWE in his mid-20s.

But Jarrett said his passion has always been the behind-the-scenes aspect of the wrestling industry, like his grandmother and father. Along with his father, Jarrett helped launch TNA in 2002 and remains invested in the company though he is not involved with its operation.

"I was totally fascinated by the appeal of the pageantry, and I grew up an athlete so I loved the physicality of it," Jarrett said. "My grandmother wasn't happy at first when I wanted to get into the business, because I was an academic all-American and I quit after one year of school. That wasn't received real well.

"But in time, she did support me. I think if she was here now she would be proud of me. I learned from her the fundamentals ? build the foundation on a rock. If you build that foundation, then in the lean times your core fans will be there for you. That's what I'm applying to GFW."