Dark Side of the Ring’s ‘Jeff Jarrett & The Battle for TNA’ part 3 review

If you missed the first entry covering the first two episodes, here you go.

When we last left off, Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff were on their way into TNA, Jeff Jarrett was on the sidelines, and Dixie Carter was in control of TNA. 

Eric Bischoff said Hogan believed there was a tremendous value in his brand and that value could help TNA — “the little engine that could” — get somewhere. 

Talent Meeting 

Dixie called a talent meeting and told the entire locker room — in front of television cameras — that it was time for the talent to choose whether or not they supported her. And if they didn’t support her, they needed to find a new place to work.  

“It was one of those meetings that single-handedly pulled a lot of the morale out of the room.” — D’Lo Brown. 

Then they played it on television later that day. David Sahadi said that’s when the locker room lost complete respect for her. It’s worth pointing out here that Dixie was asked to be a part of this series and ultimately declined, so there is no one defending her point of view.

A lawyer from Panda Energy called to bring Jarrett back into the fold, but he felt like Dixie wanted “a thumb” on Jeff so she could know what he was up to. Jarrett came in to do live events and international television. He wasn’t sure how this was going to play out, but he put his game face on and came back. 

Whatcha Gonna Do?

Ten years before his return to TNA, Hulk Hogan, Bischoff, and Vince Russo had a huge creative blowup over the finish to a PPV main event (ironically also involving Jarrett), so Bischoff and Russo had a meeting to “clear the air.” 

The creative team for TNA at this point was Russo, Ed Ferrara and Matt Conway.  According to Russo, Carter added Bischoff to the creative process only for Hogan’s creative. Russo believed that Bischoff just wanted to get power in the company. 

Bischoff: “I mean, creatively, I was leading the charge. I mean, I just evolved into that, partly because I have a pretty strong personality.” 

Jarrett thought Hogan was coming in as a brand ambassador, but instead he was giving the keys to the company, bringing in “new” talent like Ric Flair, The Outsiders, and the Nasty Boys. Also, ironically, Taz (on commentary in 2010) credited Hogan for bringing in Ken Anderson. 

The Hardys, Kia Stevens and Jim Cornette harshly criticized the roster changes. Cornette said if you  were personal friends of Hogan, they had a spot for you. Stevens said they brought in people who “made an impact in the 80s” come in and tell the TNA talent what they were doing wrong or that they were unprofessional which Stevens thought was “bullsh*t.”

Jeff Hardy was critical about the money that was going out and egos that were coming in at that time and there was this from Matt Hardy: “They weren’t going to add to the product. They were going to come in, they were going to get a spot and get paid.” 

One of the biggest changes: getting rid of the six-sided ring in favor of a four-sided ring. Bischoff’s argument was it didn’t add anything, so get rid of it. The fans in the Impact Zone disagreed, chanting “We want six sides” when the change was announced.   

Russo had issues with these changes, because it was about doing what was best for Hogan and not what was best for TNA. 

Head to Head (Again)

Bischoff took the show head-to-head with WWE Raw which even Russo thought that was a bad idea. Bischoff said it wasn’t necessarily going back to an old bag of tricks, but trying to create brand awareness.

“When you put our show next to their show at the same time, they are going to look like a million bucks, and we’re going to look like trailer trash,” he said.

A clip is shown of Hogan trash-talking Jarrett in a live promo, talking about how Jarrett may have formed TNA, but Hogan and Carter were taking it to the top. But it was only a year into Hogan’s run that TNA went from financial profitability to a financial “death spiral.” 

Bischoff moved TNA to Mondays on January 4, 2010. He claimed that the most watched Impact episode in history were the head-to-head episodes with Raw. However, Bischoff was also pretty sure it wasn’t going to work long-term. 

“We were the fly on the ass of a rhino.” — D’Lo Brown said, adding that TNA’s house show numbers dropped and their Nielsen numbers dropped. 

With things on the downturn, Russo turned to a conflict rooted in real life: a feud between Jarrett and  Kurt Angle over Karen Jarrett. Dixie signed off on the idea which Bischoff recognized would only strain the relationship between Carter and Jarrett more. 

Karen thought that people wanted to root for Kurt, and it would be easy for them to hate Jeff and Karen. Stevens respected Jeff and Kurt for putting their differences aside to run the angle while Brown thought it was the most productive storyline TNA had ever done. 

Jarrett reminded people that he and Angle have been co-parenting kids since 2010. Karen was more direct: “It was a f*cking storyline.” 

In 12 months, they went from sending Jarrett home for “stealing Kurt’s wife” to turning it into a storyline. Jarrett observed that Carter was never concerned about Angle when she “sent Jeff home” and that it was just a power play. 

Victory Road 2011 

Okay, buckle up. 

Jeff Hardy came back to TNA in 2010, and everyone knew that he was into drugs. But according to Bischoff, “for the most part, he had it under control.” 

Let that last sentence hang with you for a minute. 

Hardy was in the main event with Sting. Sahadi was directing the show, and Brown was the agent for the match. Within seconds of being around Hardy, Brown could tell he wasn’t in his right mind. 

Someone got ahold of Matt Hardy to tell him Jeff wasn’t in a good state. Bischoff showed up backstage and wanted to know what was going on. Brown said a decision was made to let Jeff to go the ring to see if he could “walk it off” or “maybe he would pop back into normal Jeff” when he’s in front of the crowd.  It’s unclear who to attribute the decision to. 

But it was clear to Sahadi once Jeff went through the curtain that he was “f*cked up on something.” He was doing all kinds of weird stuff during his entrance, clearly not okay. Bischoff was looking at Carter, wanting to know what to do next. 

According to Jarrett, he had seemed okay earlier but he wasn’t aware of everything going on that day. Remember, at this point Jarrett wasn’t “office” anymore, and he was involved in his own creative. Russo called Jeff over. 

Meanwhile, Bischoff went down to the ring, got close to Hardy and told him to “get the f— out of the ring.” But it didn’t register with Jeff, who just stood there. 

Hardy’s account (which can and should be taken with a grain of salt) was that Bischoff said “get rid of that piece of trash” but he did admit it was all a blur. 

Bischoff went over to Sting and told him to just hit Hardy with his finish. Sting did exactly that and held him down for a three count (Hardy was trying to kick out, but Sting held him down). Hardy said he was at his lowest point here, he’d given up on himself and calls his actions reckless. 

Jarrett (too many Jeffs) watched the replay of the match in the truck and heard a few different stories about what had happened, realized all he could do by getting involved  was make things worse. So he stayed out of it. Jarrett didn’t understand how Hardy could get to a point in his addiction where it was so bad he couldn’t perform. (This is foreshadowing.)

Bischoff said it was “embarrassing for everyone involved.” Brown said there were a million right decisions they could have made, and they chose the wrong one. Matt Hardy said it was the “wake up call” that Jeff needed to stop doing pills. 

Ultimately, according to Jeff, this disaster happened on Carter’s watch, so she was responsible for it. 

At the end of 2011, Hardy beat Jarrett in a loser leaves TNA match. At this point, Jarrett realized the money situation was getting bad and was going to get worse. Jarrett left TNA to focus on a new promotion, Ring Ka King (described as a TNA offshoot in India). 

The End of Hulkamania (in TNA, anyway) 

Less than four years after his TNA run began, Hogan decided it was time to leave. Bischoff took credit for the angle they shot ending Hogan’s TNA run. 

On television, Carter offered him a new contract to stay and Hogan shot her down in the middle of the ring. Hogan left the ring with Carter begging him to stay. Carter literally grabbed Hogan by the leg to try and get him to stay. That image is something else. 

This was another opportunity for Russo to complain about his second favorite thing to complain about: Hogan’s creative control. 

Last Gasp 

The late musician Toby Keith, who performed on some of the first TNA shows, asked Jarrett how things were going. Jarrett was blunt: “it’s a financial death spiral.” Keith decided to help Jeff regain some power and was willing to “get on board” with TNA, but only if Jarrett was in charge. The lawyers from TNA wouldn’t commit to giving Jarrett control, so Keith walked away from the deal. 

Without Keith, Jarrett knew the company was doomed, so he resigned.

Global Force Wrestling 

Jarrett put together a new company, Global Force Wrestling. They did a 20 date tour of baseball stadiums. A picture from one of the shows was shown, and it was a six-sided ring in an empty minor league stadium.

Meanwhile, Anthem Sports bought TNA and renamed it Impact Wrestling. Ed Nordholm of Anthem wanted to merge Global Force Wrestling with Impact. Karen Jarrett was skeptical, but Jeff was optimistic. 

Jarrett came back to Impact, but Sahadi observed it was the “darkest” he had ever seen him. He felt like Jarrett was on a “revenge tour” out to stick it to Carter and everyone who drove him out before. 

Of course, within two months Jarrett learned there was no money with the new Impact and merging the brands wasn’t working out financially. Jarrett admits that if people thought he was upset, they were right. This led Jarrett down a dark path of drinking which Karen justified because he was worried about how he was going to provide for their kids. 

Jarrett broke his own rules about waiting until his matches were over to start to drink. Karen tried to get him to get help, but Jeff denied he had a problem. 

One day at the pool, Jarrett looked down at his expanding beer gut and decided to make a change: switching to vodka. 

“He was killing himself.” — Karen Jarrett

 AAA → AA

In 2017, Jarrett headed down to Mexico without Karen for AAA Triplemania. He was at the arena on Friday waiting for a noon call to go over his match. When no one called, he started drinking and spent the day getting loaded in the locker room. They never went over the match and he headed to the hotel. 

The next day, he got a good breakfast “like any active alcoholic” and got a drink before he headed to the arena. One thing led to another and he was wasted backstage. 

Footage was shown of him goofing around backstage, clearly wasted. He went in front of the live crowd and threw tortillas at them. When he got to the back, it was an ugly situation as he was getting into fights backstage with multiple people. 

When Jarrett got back to the office on Tuesday, Lynn Asper and Nordholm told him it was time to go to out-patient rehab which Jarrett wasn’t thrilled with.

“If Jeff never talks to me again, but gets clean, I’ll be okay with that.” — Scott D’Amore

His bosses at Impact gave Jarrett six weeks to get this thing under control. According to Jarrett, he was in outpatient treatment four hours a day. He sat in the front row and said he was a model student. 

Then, he boarded a plane to a TNA taping in Edmonton and got a double rum and coke, drinking all the way through the weekend. Jarrett didn’t realize how much denial he was in. 

That Monday morning, Karen confronted Jeff about the drinking after she had gotten the kids to school. This was his “moment of clarity” and he decided to go into treatment again.

However, it was the WWE Wellness program that got him inpatient treatment in Tampa for his addiction. Karen wasn’t sure about leaving him there and not being able to be there with him.

Jeff talked about the origins of his problems, being a five-year-old student in private school whose dad never came to his games or school events. Carrying that resentment towards his father for years, and the drama from TNA drove a wedge through them as well. Wrestling in a match moments after Owen Hart died in the ring and never dealing with that grief. He never dealt with the grief from the passing of his first wife. He spent 56 days in rehab and finally got honest with himself. 

Jarrett got out of rehab a few days before Christmas 2017.  

The first Sunday of  2018, he got the call from Vince McMahon to go into the WWE Hall of Fame. Clips were shown of his induction speech, thanking Karen, his daughters and his father. “Without the valleys, it’s impossible to have the mountaintops.” Jeff was also inducted into the TNA Hall of Fame in 2015, but this went unmentioned.

2026 

Jarrett now works for AEW and put over Tony Khan’s passion for wrestling. Khan put over Jarrett’s experience all over the world in wrestling. 

Jarrett talked about being in the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. He did an interview about Hart before his match and it “resonated.”  Even though he was a heel as a character, he was a babyface in the tournament that night. Jarrett described it as a “massive full circle moment.” 

Khan said that Jarrett is in a great place today. He’s sober, still in great shape, healthy and he still moves around like a young man. He can still wrestle and he helps train the younger wrestlers which Karen believes that he gets great joy from. 

Jarrett believes that he’s more engaged and passionate about wrestling than he’s ever been. Lots of footage from AEW events backstage showed him working with talent. 

Matt Hardy expressed gratitude for “rolling the dice” on TNA. Matt believes that Jarrett has changed the business. 

Russo puts over Jarrett. He thinks that if Jarrett hadn’t lost control of the company, “God knows where TNA would be.” 

Scott Steiner thinks TNA “should have died a thousand deaths already, but it’s still kicking.” 

Jeff Hardy thinks TNA has been great for him and his brother over the last few years. 

Bischoff hopes that TNA still being around in 2026 makes Jeff feel proud, and obviously there’s no TNA without Jeff and Jerry Jarrett. 

Brown believes that TNA is a microcosm of Jarrett’s life, “Still standing somehow.” 

Jeff Hardy believes the story of TNA is the story of Jeff Jarrett. 

D’Amore believes if Jeff Jarrett had disappeared after Jill passed away, or disappeared over the drama with him and Karen, or disappeared in 2017, then “we don’t have one of the greatest success stories that’s ever transpired.” 

(I’m not sure TNA is one of the greatest success stories, if that’s what D’Amore is referring to.) 

Steiner said every time Jarrett got knocked out, he got back up and got back up stronger. 

Jarrett: “Some people call me stupid, naive, an idiot… but I bet on myself. And that is something that I can look my children in their eyes: Get up to bat, get in the game. It makes life so rewarding.” 

My Final Thoughts: 

The producers initially pitched a six-episode story on TNA, so this isn’t so much a complete history of TNA but more the story of the company through the lens of Jeff. The documentary is surprisingly candid about his personal struggles, but less so about some of the financial and creative decisions he made in building the company. 

The one major chapter of the story that isn’t about Jarrett was Jeff Hardy’s appalling performance  at Victory Road. To me, it serves as the best microcosm of TNA without him in charge. The match was a disaster and everyone who thought they were “in charge” (Carter, Bischoff, Russo) pointed fingers at someone else and refused to take responsibility for the disaster. 

This is not a complete look at the history of TNA. It’s the story of Jeff Jarrett told through the creation and evolution of TNA. Judged on those terms, it’s a compelling documentary and worth watching.