During an appearance on The Ariel Helwani Show, Josh Barnett addressed putting the Bloodsport events on hiatus for the foreseeable future after its fifteenth iteration.
Explaining his conflicting feelings on the decision, Barnett stated he feels he made the right choice, adding:
It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing or a tragedy or major overarching bad issue, but for me, Bloodsport had an evolution of where it was trying to get to. That was not going to be a traditional wrestling path, especially because it’s not really made for the indie wrestling in a way that a lot of indie wrestling is done. You’re not doing shows with frequency; it’s not made for that. We don’t have the talent to keep up with it because you can’t book just anybody on this show.
For me, that evolution was everything I was building on with that concept was to get it to that point where I felt like it could be put together in the best format in the best way possible to give it the ability to flourish at it’s best. We’re not there. We’re not close. For me, it was better to end it now than to keep going on and quite possibly diminish what the product is or run it down before we had a chance to get to where I feel like it would have been at it’s best.
Bloodsport was initially presented by Matt Riddle in 2018, with Barnett taking over the following year after Riddle signed with WWE.
The event became a staple of the week ahead of WrestleMania, with talents from WWE, TNA, New Japan, and more competing on the cards.
Barnett revealed one factor that played into making the decision to put Bloodsport on hold:
I thought very deeply and heavily about this. I was trying to bring on corporate sponsors or sponsors in general to support the show, and bring in other outside elements to build towards what the ultimate example is, and we just weren’t able to do it.
That’s not to say there isn’t any possibility of doing that, but I had a timeline and we didn’t meet those goals. It’s closed unless things can be done to get us where we need to go.
Source: Fightful