WWE has announced that TNA Wrestling and Global Force Wrestling founder Jeff Jarrett will be inducted into the Class of 2018 WWE Hall of Fame this April in New Orleans.
NBC Sports was the first to make the announcement on Monday morning.
BREAKING: @RealJeffJarrett is the newest member of @WWE's 2018 Hall of Fame Class https://t.co/zwo6fsipN2 pic.twitter.com/7sVlvSEHxg
— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) February 19, 2018
Jarrett joins Goldberg, The Dudley Boyz and Ivory as the announced inductees for the ceremony taking place on Friday, April 6 in during WrestleMania 34 weekend.
After an early career with WCCW and USWA, Jarrett signed with the WWE (then WWF) in 1993 and would go on to hold the Intercontinental Championship three times. Following a contract dispute, Jarrett would sign with WCW in 1996 in a run that would only last a year before returning to WWE in 1997. Jarrett held the WWF Tag Team Titles with Owen Hart in 1999 and would go on to hold the Intercontinental Championship for three more reigns in 1999 along with a brief run as European Champion.
He would go on to have a high-profile outing with WWE in late 1999 when his contract with the company expired one day before he was scheduled to defend the Intercontinental Championship against Chyna. Per public reports, Jarrett demanded an “undisclosed amount of money” from Vince McMahon to work the match against Chyna. Jarrett lost the championship and would return to WCW that same year. He would have runs as the WCW United States Champion (1999) and four reigns as WCW World Champion in 2000.
Following the sale of WCW to the WWE in 2001, Jarrett founded NWA-TNA (later known as TNA Wrestling) with his father Jerry Jarrett. The company would struggle financially in the early days running weekly Wednesday night PPV events, first beginning in Alabama and later transitioning to the Nashville Fairgrounds. After securing financial backing with Panda Energy and naming Dixie Carter as the new President, Jarrett would go on to be the focal point for the company from 2002 through 2006 as NWA World Heavyweight Champion as the show went from weekly Wednesday PPV to monthly PPV events and secured television deals with Fox Sports Net and later on Spike TV.
Jarrett publicly resigned from TNA in December of 2013 and later founded Global Force Wrestling. In 2015, Jarrett took GFW on the road booking minor league baseball stadiums across the country and later held TV tapings in Las Vegas. The TV tapings were never picked up and Jarrett made his return to TNA in the summer of 2015 at the Slammiversary PPV beginning a feud between the TNA and GFW rosters. Jarrett won the King of the Mountain Championship at the Slammiversary. That storyline would finish with Team GFW losing to Team TNA, with Jarrett publicly focusing on trying to find a potential suitor to air the GFW television tapings he had edited from Las Vegas.
In 2017, Anthem Sports and Entertainment purchased TNA Wrestling and changed the name of the company to Impact Wrestling. Jarrett would be brought back to the company by Ed Norholm, with Anthem announcing a purchase and merger with Jarrett’s Global Force Wrestling. The new partnership with Jarrett would see him take on a major backstage role. Impact would also air the GFW Amped TV tapings two years later on PPV featuring talents such as Bobby Roode and Eric Young who were now signed to WWE. The partnership ended in October when Anthem announced it was parting ways with Jarrett. Jarrett would then enter rehab to treat alcoholism, which was paid for by WWE.
Outside of a recent appearance with Jerry “The King” Lawler at a Memphis Grizzlies NBA game, Jarrett has stayed pretty quiet in 2018 since his successful stint in rehab.
Thanks to our friends at Online World of Wrestling for help with this report.