Despite the excitement for the Q&A with Johnny Impact, this week’s GFW media conference call had a large cloud cast over it. Members of the media went into the call looking for answers about the departure of GFW’s Chief Creative Officer, Jeff Jarrett but those hopes were quashed quickly as GFW Head of Media Relations, Ross Forman, issued a statement that stated no questions referring to Jarrett or the GFW company would be permitted. Forman did announce, though, that our questions would be answered and the creative future of the company addressed during next week’s call with Big John Gaburick, Scott D’Amore and Sonjay Dutt.
Leave of Absence
Global Force Wrestling announced that Jeff Jarrett would be taking a leave of absence from GFW in a short statement on the Impact Wrestling website. It read:
“Effective immediately, Jeff Jarrett is taking an indefinite leave of absence from his position as Chief Creative Officer to focus on personal matters. Jeff will be available on a consultative basis as needed.”
In the time since the release of this statement, speculation has run rampant about the reasons for this situation. The fact that Jeff Jarrett was tweeting optimistically about GFW related matters the morning before the release of the statement suggests that the decision was not wholly Jarrett’s. According to PWInsider, Ed Nordholm (Executive Vice President of Anthem Sports, GFW’s parent company) made the decision to remove Jarrett on Tuesday morning and had met with him in Nashville, Tennessee by that same afternoon. Sources among the internet wrestling community have speculated that Nordholm had been becoming increasingly unhappy with Jeff Jarrett, citing his behaviour as erratic and criticising him for appearing out of shape and lethargic at the AAA TripleMania show at the end of August.
The most interesting issue, however, is that should Jeff Jarrett leave the company, Anthem could find themselves without the GFW name going forward. With the acquisition of Global Force Wrestling LLC not completed and the legal rights to the name still retained by Jeff Jarrett, Anthem Sports could be forced to revert to the Impact Wrestling name, undoing all of the hard work that has gone into unifying the championships and rebranding their television show all around the world.
These are indeed troubling times for the GFW fan and, as usual, the responses that the company have provided us with leave more questions than answers.
What does the departure of Jeff Jarrett mean for the future of GFW? Let us know your thoughts on the situation in the comment section.
